Deep Inside Of You
by Yui Miyamoto
Summary: (Anime Fanfiction Oscar Awards Winner - Clever Plot) [Completed] This is an extensive piece which dives into the hearts and minds of each X character. Note: shounen ai in some parts
1. I don't care if you break me

Disclaimer: X is brought to you by the creative quartet known as Clamp.  
  
  
As with the clashing of the sparks of the mind, the crystals fall. You   
only find out that when you get closer, they're not crystals, but beads   
of tears and glass that had once been whole...  
  
Deep inside of you.  
by Yui Miyamoto  
  
Chapter 1 - I don't care if you break me...  
  
I grabbed my head in pain. It isn't very good when you wake up with a   
splitting headache only to find that it was because of the nightmare   
you had just had. And to find out it was real...well, those are the   
things that broken dreams are made of.  
  
I sat up in my bed to find myself looking around. "It's another day..." I trailed off as I heard the birds outside of my   
window sing some forgotten melody.  
  
Yes, another day...  
  
It was then that I patted the right side of my bed where it was still a   
little warm. And I looked at my white pajamas slipping from my   
shoulders as the white sheets around me clung to my waist and legs to reveal the imprint of my body.  
  
I was such in a daze...  
  
I wanted to smile. I wanted to cry.   
I think I'm losing my mind...  
  
So, I lifted my knee and balanced my elbow on it as my chin sat on the   
palm of my hand. "At least my fever was gone," I mumbled to myself.  
  
Chirp, chirp.  
chirpchirpchirpchirp.  
  
But, as the birds began to chirp even more numerous than when I had   
woken up, I threw my pillow at the window and saw all of the noisy birds fly away. In a fit, I ran to the window and plastered my hands on it like the child I had once been. Looking on with wonder at their flapping wings, my heart began to ache.  
  
Who do you need?   
Who do you love?  
  
"Kotori..." I whispered.  
  
I never thought I would say that name ever again.  
  
I didn't even want to think of it. It just made me more hurtful the   
more I thought about it.  
  
What was happening here?  
Where was I? What I was I doing?  
  
I laughed to myself mockingly, "You're supposed to decide the world's fate, but you can't even pick anything without thinking twice about it."  
  
Then, an image of Fuuma smiling was in front of me.  
  
My friend. "Tomodachi dakara..." he had said so many years ago that it could have been from a different lifetime by now.  
  
And he didn't know what kind of feeling that gave me. I don't think he could have ever understood it.  
It was more than any smile I could give. I might even dare to say it   
was more than my mother's embrace before she had sacrificed herself to   
the tangible and living hell cloaked in flames around her.  
That was when Kotori...  
  
Kotori...  
  
Yes, I remember she had jumped into my arms and said she had also   
wanted me to become her friend. There was no way I could resist a greeting like that, now could I?  
Only a bastard would...  
  
Yeah, when she came up to me on the school rooftop, I couldn't even look at her, huh? I couldn't tell her straight that she shouldn't associate with me.  
Instead, she had turned...and crushed from the pain I had caused   
her...and there I was bonking my head on the pole like a fool.  
  
Yes, a fool.  
  
For if it weren't for me, she would be here. Right next to me. She   
would blush, smile, cry...  
  
I don't care what! Even if she hated me for the rest of her life, I'd   
rather have her alive than this!  
I have caused her pain...I've caused pain to so many people...  
  
And yet...  
Shaking my head, I hesitantly mimed the name, "Fuuma."  
  
If for every person I had not thought of with my carelessness, I was making up for it. Fuuma had been chosen to be my tormentor.  
  
My best friend. One of only two friends early in my life.  
My whole life...until now...  
  
I slipped to the ground and hugged my arms as my eyes closed in horror.   
The tears fell softly to the floor and there was nothing to stop them.  
  
"It just wasn't fair..." I sobbed.  
  
That was what I wanted to say, but my heart had kept it in for so long. And with that ache, it began to encroach my heart like a disease digging into my thoughts like a drill saying, "Who do you need? Who do you love?..."  
  
When I look at Fuuma, I'm so troubled that I just stand there as if I   
want something bad to happen to me. It's like I'm inviting this type of bad situation to occur.  
  
But I wasn't...  
  
How can I make a kekkai? What is there for me to protect?  
I can't...  
I don't know what to do.  
  
I know I acted very tough in the beginning of this whole ordeal, but   
that was just a front. Nothing could ever be the same. I was just   
living in denial when I thought that.  
  
You can't escape your fate, you only drown in your dream.  
  
What do I do? What do I pick? Who do I choose?  
  
I can never have what I want. Can I really protect Fuuma and save him   
at the same time I kill also?  
  
This makes absolutely no sense to me.  
  
These were the thoughts in my head last night...as with every night,   
but it was when the dam inside of me was broken and my water spilled into my hands did I understand what kind of situation I was in and part of the path I was supposed to take.  
  
Everyone looks at me to make a decision. And yes, I know we all   
deserve to know what that is...  
  
but they fail to realize that despite being the hand of god or one that   
hunts them...  
  
...I am only human.  
  
I am no god.  
I am no savior.  
  
What am I to do? Where am I to go? What is my true wish?  
  
What do you really want, Kamui?  
  
At that moment, warm arms wrapped around me. Last night, those hands   
had run through my hair to put me to sleep...  
  
I whispered barely, "Subaru..."  
  
Despite everything, you always come at the right moment to keep me in   
one piece.  
  
Placing my hands upon his own, I grab onto him firmly as the hot tears   
splattered on his arms.  
It was then that he hugged me tighter. "I know. I know..." he   
murmured softly to my ear. "It's okay..."  
  
When I had gone crazy, he was the one to pull me out of it. I could   
never thank him enough for that. Never.  
He understood everything I said without me saying it. He had gone   
through something similar, only it was a little different.  
  
Then, I lifted up my head backwards as he looked down at me and I   
kissed him on the lips.  
Who do you need?  
This was wrong...  
Who do you love?  
I shouldn't trust another person.  
Who do you need?  
I will only hurt Arashi...Sorata...Yuzuriha...  
Who do you love?  
...Subaru...  
  
And if I don't hurt you...you will eventually end up hurting me.  
  
I lifted up my head more as tears fell down the sides of eyes.  
  
Idon'twantothinkaboutitIdon'wanttothinkaboutitIdon'twanttothinkaboutit...  
  
Then, I blinked my eyes as I stared up at him with his green eyes   
staring back at me.  
  
I...trust these eyes...  
  
with my life...  
my soul...  
my heart.  
  
And I don't care if you do break me...  
Not right now.  
  
---  
Author's note: It's your fault, amanda-chan! 


	2. Sagashite'ru

Disclaimer: X isn't yui's and she knows that...so end of subject.  
  
Deep Inside of You  
by Miyamoto Yui  
  
  
Chapter 2 - Sagashite'ru. (Searching.)  
  
I stared down at Kamui as he looked up at me.   
  
Don't look at me. No, not like that. It makes me feel so...useless...  
  
The way He had...  
He made me feel like I was nothing. My feelings were just a trinket of   
his affections and there I was like a beggar only too happy to receive   
what he had given me.  
  
I thought it was his heart that he had given me.  
Like the gloves I had resolved to wearing, he had slipped into my life as if it were only natural, yet strange at the same time.  
  
But Seishirou is a thief. He stole what I had carefully kept inside.   
  
Instead, everything gushed out...in a look...in an eye...  
when he protected me.  
  
I hate it when people look at me. They've known I've changed. I know   
I have. And it makes me feel so hurt inside and confused.  
So, I've not been able to say anything.  
  
Can't...can't have another person...  
  
I immediately got up and walked away towards the door.  
  
I am running away like before.   
I'm afraid if I get close to someone,   
that person will leave me.  
  
But...  
...there was something about Kamui that made me look back. If it had   
been any other person but Kamui and Him...well, I just wouldn't have.  
  
Kamui had stood up and continued to keep his head down staring at the floor with his hair covering his eyes.   
  
I continued to look at him.  
  
I can't...  
I'll turn around and leave. If I don't go now, I'll-  
  
Glomp.  
  
He hugged me from behind. "Subaru?" said a desparately, cute voice.  
  
Are you going to leave me? I know that's what you want to say. Yes, I   
want to say. And yet, I'm still here standing...  
  
...trying to find an answer...trying to find answers to all my   
questions that had built before and after nine years before when I was crushed under that sakura tree.  
  
I wanted to know why this had befallen me. I wanted to know why was it   
that the most important people I want beside me cannot be? Was that   
fair at all? I didn't think it was fair. Not at all.  
And then, Fate had bring along a boy that looked like myself. He went   
insane and tilted his head staring at the world so blankly.  
  
But we are the same Kamui. In that sense. You and I.  
  
Only...  
You may have gotten out of your illusion. But I haven't.  
I have become so unfeeling, still staring so blankly at everything and   
everyone around me. I pretend to keep my calm, but that all disappears   
when I'm next to you.  
  
You're so warm...  
  
I was told that you were a kind child...  
I guess that's true...  
  
But I don't look at you like a child. Your eyes have seen more than   
anyone can see as a child. I was once like that, only to be rudely   
awakened into a harsh reality.  
  
"I'm sorry, Kamui," I whispered as I softly took off his arms from my   
waist.  
  
Without looking back, I walked away.  
  
I always runaway...  
  
I'm pushing myself away like I always do. I'm hiding what I shouldn't.  
  
You remind me of all my weaknesses.  
Just like Seishirou.  
  
"I never felt alone. Until I met you..." My feet were walking faster and faster.  
  
I left without a word...like usual. I do what I want and when I want   
to.  
  
No one will tell me what I have to do, or what I have to fulfill. No one knows more than I. For these chains that bind me to me as heir to our clan or the world...I want to cut them so badly.  
  
But, I found myself running. Like in the rain with the little girl who had broken my heart with her story. In the pouring rain, I held my fists together.  
I'm still crying inside. I won't let my feelings out. I've kept   
them well-hidden. Even more than when Seishirou and Hokuto-chan had   
opened them...  
  
Until...  
I gasped a bit. "I remember..."  
Until I found myself in front of Seishirou's apartment.  
  
The old one...  
  
Then, my tears fell in an instant at the sin I had committed. I wanted   
so much to knock on it. But I knew I couldn't. Not anymore.  
  
"I want..." I mumbled.  
  
The old one...I want the old Seishirou back...  
  
This time, I didn't care. I went down on my knees and shook my head as   
the tears went down my face one by one like the raindrops that were   
falling from the sky.   
  
My silence.  
I didn't want to be quiet anymore. I wanted someone to share this   
with...like Kamui. This pain, this loneliness that he also feels...  
  
Even after all these years, I was still the same. My heart had not   
changed, it just became darker...more closed.  
But I was still the same Subaru. No matter how much I thought I had   
changed...  
My weakness...my strengths...  
I...  
  
All the words that I couldn't express...all the shouting in my head   
became a dull silence.  
  
And from my mouth, I uttered what I had always wanted to say...  
Expressing all the memories that I couldn't ever articulate without   
becoming numb...  
The wish that I could never tell anyone...  
  
I know it's wrong, demo...  
Would you laugh at me Hokuto-chan? Or would you cry for me?  
  
Deep inside of me...  
This is what has been crushing me more than sakura petals that fly when they try to tell you that you are supposed to die...  
  
I whispered to myself,  
"O...ne...gai..." I sobbed with a squeak. "Onegai..."  
  
"Boku ni...Seishirou-san wo kaeshite yo."  
  
Please Fate.  
Give Seishirou back to me.  
  
The one that smiled at me all the time...  
The one that took care of me when I needed him...  
  
Please return My Seishirou-san to me...  
I can't find him anymore...  
  
I've been looking for him for a long time...  
  
  
  
===  
Author's note: Subaru...*shakes head* Wah!!! *sniff, sniff* 


	3. Despite everything I've done

Disclaimer: X isn't Yui's, but Clamp's.  
  
Deep Inside of You  
by Miyamoto Yui  
  
Chapter 3 - Despite everything I've done...  
  
"How..." I mumbled in a slight whisper.  
  
Maybe it was fate.  
Oh how cruel that goddess was.  
  
For as I looked down at my feet, there was a familiar heap that had   
clustered himself in front of me.  
And then, that person's head fell down on the floor.  
  
Though I was shocked to find him there, I kept my smile calmly on my   
face all the same.  
  
From the familiar trenchcoat's color and scent, I immediately bent down and took his body into my arms.  
"Same as always," I laughed.  
  
Always quick to faint whenever his subconsciousness couldn't take the impact of something anymore. He had reached his limit.  
  
As I brushed his hair away from his sleeping face, I saw those eyes.  
  
Those eyes...  
  
I hated it when you cried...  
Because I know I'm the cause of every one of those tears.  
  
As I turned and took one last glance at that familiar abode that had once been mine, I went down the stairs only to hear a soft whispering of my name from his lips.  
  
"Seishirou...boku ni...kaeshite..."  
  
I wonder what had brought this on. Why did he need me so much?   
  
I took off my coat and wrapped it around his body as I ran in the rain towards my new apartment.  
But the rain wasn't so kind. Instead, it rained harder and harder; and I had feared if Subaru would get drenched under my coat.  
  
As if by reflex, the tears fell from the sides of his eyes and my eyes couldn't bear to look anymore.  
  
Holding him tighter, I ran faster.  
It never failed to amaze me how much this boy had an impact on me and the things I would find myself doing for him.  
  
I knew I had fallen from grace. Very much so.  
  
As I laid him on my bed, I did not care if he was somewhat dripping on my blankets.  
For a moment, I just stood there overlooking his whole body. Touching his cheek, I leaned down to make sure if he was real and not just the figment of my imagination.  
  
He would never believe that I have spent many sleepless nights wondering if things were different...  
wondering what I would do if I ever saw him again...  
  
What had possessed me to pass through my old neighborhood? Masochistic, isn't it?  
  
We both loved to kill the one we loved.  
And yet that was the only expression we knew that kept us alive...  
  
All the magic...  
I'm feeding it off your fingers as your stars shine through the gloves to make my presence known.  
  
That is my mark on you. It tells you that you are mine.  
  
You will ALWAYS be mine.  
Mine alone.  
  
When he woke up, the boy I had known nine years ago had made a small appearance before me. Getting up slowly, he looked around as I brought a towel to him.  
"Oh, you're awake." I had said in some tone that made it like the event wasn't so special.  
  
He darted his eyes at me.  
  
"Is this the thanks I get for saving you from the rain?" I said as I plopped the white towel on his head.  
  
His eyes looked at the towel almost wistfully as he bitterly wiped the water from his hair.  
  
"Go take a shower." I honestly said. "Or else you'll get sick."  
  
His eyes opened wide a bit as if in shock.  
  
I don't know why I had been so concerned over this contrivance, and I don't know why he even listened to me, but he did.  
This lingering feeling always came back to me whenever I saw that face.  
  
Guilt.  
  
He went to the shower with a glower that wasn't of the boy I once knew. I couldn't blame him, though. I had brought upon his self-destruction.  
  
As he closed the door, I looked out at the sliding door as the rain poured as the water droplets fell like tears on the glass surface before me.  
  
It was indeed a dark day.  
  
I then glanced at the bathroom with the shh shh of the water running down the drain unable to still believe that I had brought Subaru here.  
  
I should have known better.  
This was the part of me that was so weak like a human's.   
And I hated myself for it.  
  
"I'll never learn." I said as I shook my head in disapproval.  
  
But then, the glasses I wore seemed so much heavier. As I stepped closer and closer to the bathroom door, my heart beat faster and faster.  
  
Was I really going insane?  
Everything my life had been so meticulously planned, but Subaru...he never fit in there.  
  
I opened the door and stood at the bathroom's threshold as Subaru turned off the shower water and pushed aside the door.   
  
I looked at him as he looked back at me.  
  
There was no malice. It was as if the water had also washed away the anger in his eyes.  
  
The tension was present in the air as the steam rose from his body. And still, he stood there with the water dripping onto the tile floor.  
  
I didn't want Subaru's body.  
I longed for his soul. I wanted him to give me his soul.  
  
As he stood there, I took a deep breath.   
This was my immaculate dream molded from my breath. I had molded him. His skin was the product of my careful creation.   
  
And the blood from his hands flowed downward.  
Drip, drip.  
  
It merged with the water making a beautiful color just a bit redder than sakura.  
  
As he nonchalantly took that towel I had given him and began to wipe himself, he did not say anything.  
  
It wasn't that we were afraid. No, it was something that I couldn't articulate, but could feel in the air. The thickness of everything was like swimming in an ocean of feelings with no hope of land.  
  
I didn't want to devour Subaru.  
He was this beautiful artifact that I had tried to look for all this time.   
  
And I think that's why he wasn't alarmed when I stared at him.  
  
I wanted to savor him, but he was...  
  
Like this fallen angel that I couldn't touch with broken wings protectively over his chest trying to keep what was left of his heart.  
  
I had not wanted to dirty him with my hands, but this twisted heart of mine wanted to corrupt him. I only wanted him for myself.  
  
At that moment, I reached out to him and embraced him as if I would break him.  
I wanted to break him so badly. To hurt him as much as he had hurt me. To make him see that what he had done to me was much worse than any pain I had ever given him.  
  
Then, I forced myself to kiss him. Taking off my tie and my shirt, I kissed him harder.   
Throwing my slacks somewhere towards the threshold, I had taken him up into my arms as I carried him to the shower.  
  
As the water fell on my back, there I was pressing Subaru against the cold tile wall in back of him.  
While kissing his neck, I was tortured.  
  
"This..." I trailed off.   
  
No one knows your secrets more than I, Subaru. I know you better than you know yourself.  
I'm the only one who knows that if you're kissed on the bottom of your left ribcage, you cringe in pain...  
No one knows that when someone kisses the nape of your neck, you laugh like when you were sixteen...  
  
I know all these things.  
  
I was the one who imprinted myself everywhere on this body.  
This beautiful body...  
  
But in exchange, I had given my soul to be opened by only him...  
  
As he looked down at me, he tilted his head with sad eyes searching thoroughly into mine in disbelief.  
It...  
  
It was like nothing had ever changed.  
  
Had a gap of nine years really separated us? It was hard to believe...  
  
But I knew I had taken you for granted...  
I know I had.  
  
Then, I felt his blood run down my back and splatter as the water washed it away...  
  
Splish, splash.  
  
As he winced in pain, his eyes closed and his nails grated on my back until it was bleeding in rivers.  
  
And I knew someday, he would.  
He would kill me right through the heart.  
  
It would be then that he would realize...  
  
Stupid boy. You will realize things too late.  
  
Don't you know you have already killed me through the heart, Subaru?  
  
It was then that I kissed him on the lips even harder.  
  
"I want your soul, Subaru," I murmured darkly. "Give me your soul."  
  
But as confident as I seemed, I was so desparate. It was like trying to cry when you couldn't because you didn't know how.  
  
It was then that I had remembered why I had loved you so much with such a blinded eye to all my faults when it concerned you...  
...without change or time affecting my judgment...  
...whether you were 9, 16, or 25...  
  
It wasn't your innocence at all...  
It was your kindness.   
  
Though you should have judged me, you were gentle...  
  
Looking again into those trusting green eyes that had risen back from hiding all these years, I held his cheeks.  
  
That's why I couldn't kill you, Subaru...  
  
I don't know if you'll understand since my head is warped in different dimensions with justifications that make sense in weird logic...  
  
As the water became quieter and quieter when I turned the knob, I shook my head as I still held his waist looking straight into his eyes. "You stupid boy. How could you say 'Give Seishirou back to me...'"  
My hands trembled in frustration. "...when I was always there?"  
  
No matter where you'll go and how much I want to get away...  
what you become or how I deteriorate...  
  
I'll always be there.  
Deep inside of you...  
In that silence that you have numbed yourself to the world.  
  
It's clear that I was always there...  
It is still hard for me to believe because until now, I'm still trying to convince myself.  
  
Despite everything I've done...  
until now...  
  
You still love me...  
  
---  
Author's note: I'm so unsatisfied with this. Seishirou is always a hard character to do, but I hope you liked it anyway. It took so long to make. 2 hours?! 


	4. Never Told You

Disclaimer: X isn't mine. It's clamp's.  
  
Deep Inside of You  
by Miyamoto Yui  
  
Chapter 4 - Never Told You.  
  
"Despite everything I've done...until now...You still love me..." a radio played in the air as a car passed by.  
  
That was the trigger, I think.  
By now, I knew life wasn't full of coincidences. They were just full of incidents that made them seem so.  
  
Smiling to myself, I started to look down to the ground while I bit on my fingernails swaying a bit from where I stood. As the sprinkling rain patted on the soft earth of this early morning, a tear finally fell down my cheek as I blew into my handkerchief. But, despite it all, I was keeping up the smile that I had learned to plaster upon my crying mask.  
Makeup did wonders, that I knew. Actresses used them all the time. I knew I did...  
I did it all the time.  
  
From far away, I had watched the service of a young boy-I laughed to myself.  
"Oh no, that's right," I whispered to myself. He's not a boy anymore though he was seven years ago. He was a man now. A decent one at that.  
It was a strange plight. There I was. A woman who was attending the services and yet not allowed to participate in them.  
I didn't think I should have. And the people around him may have heard too much about me already. It's a sad thing, but we must live by these constraints.  
Humans take trinkets way too seriously. And they hold grudges. They think that's how they can justify themselves.  
My mother had.  
  
But for myself, I was like a woman that held the balance with blinded eyes. I was neither good, but nor was I bad. I just kept living, that's all.  
I was some kind of justice...well, to him at least.  
  
Bowing my head, I made the sign of the cross. As the people dispersed, I made my way to his grave. With slightly clenched hands, I held my head up and walked to his grave.  
While kneeling, I bowed my head to the grave marker and began to talk with him inside my mind. But all I could come up with was, "Thank you."  
  
Even that stung onto my heart as if someone had pulled a rubberband on it. It had been stretched until it would be just right to snap me with all its might. It made me feel uneasy, as if I couldn't breathe.  
  
I didn't want to cry.  
I promised you I wouldn't.  
  
Placing my head on my palm while tilting slightly, I blurted to the silence, "Remember when we first met...?"  
  
  
It was not long when I ended up on the bad part of Tokyo. In a whirlwind of events, until now, I just have to sort through everything just to recall what had happened to me. Being passed from relative to friends...to only runaway to Tokyo.  
At that moment of flashing through my life inside my head while smiling at everyone around me, it just happened that I was called to be a hostess for someone. A new customer, they had said to me.  
I laughed and made my way to the front. Someone new. Someone else to interact with.  
  
Smile, Karen, smile.  
  
But when I sat in the booth with this twenty-three-year-old, he just wanted me to talk to him. He drank with me, but he would never touch me. And we ended up doing that all night.  
After that, he came every week. I actually looked forward to him coming because it meant that I would talk to someone intelligently...I wouldn't go so far as to insult any other customers, but I had to say, he had class.  
It was true, though. He did. He was the youngest manager of his company and had made a name for himself somewhere.  
But to me, no matter what he was, he would always be my "Miki". It was a good nickname for him. It fit for him being stuck between being an adult and a child at the same time.  
One day, I just casually asked, "Why do you come here, Miki?" Until now, I didn't know why he came to this part of Tokyo that everyone wished didn't exist. It wasn't until he had told me his true reason did I truly understand.   
"Weird as it may be, there's no one to talk to," he answered while smoking a cigarette. I was someone that didn't want anything from him. And so, he instead had found me to cover that gap of connecting to someone without strings.   
  
It didn't bother me though. He treated me like a human being too.  
  
I wasn't a toy.  
Not something that you touch when and where you wanted...  
  
Someone wouldn't forget me if I died...  
finally, I thought I had found someone who would care if I died...  
  
After seven months...  
Stubbornly, he had brought me to his private suite inside some famous hotel. He wouldn't have me in any other place but his own.   
I don't think I could remember ever being kissed or caressed the way he had. Then again, his body was warm...his heart was where it should have been...  
But then, as he laid next to me, he whispered, "So how would you like it here?"  
"Huh?" I blinked my eyes as I stared blurry-eyed at the window before me while he grabbed my waist.  
Again, he whispered to my ear, "I asked you if you liked it here."  
"Yes, it's a nice place."  
"No, Karen." He sighed knowing that I was intentionally avoiding the subject. "Do you want to live here with me?"  
  
I became incredibly quiet at that moment.  
I didn't know what to say. I didn't even know what to think.  
  
To live with Miki...  
  
"I'll pay for your fee," he said. "You won't have to work there anymore."  
  
  
I wanted to cry.  
  
  
At the first moment I had met Miki, I had a feeling that he would tell me this. I knew Miki wouldn't lie to me or do anything bad. He was as good as his word.   
Even since that first moment...His eyes.   
  
I think that's what gave it all away.  
  
Then, all these thoughts came into my mind: But what could I give him? He shouldn't be with someone of my profession. He shouldn't be with me. And he had never fallen in love before... What could he possibly know about life from my end of the scale...?  
  
I didn't know how to articulate it, but my silence became an unspoken answer.  
  
The answers were too obvious. The nervousness, too thick. I could have poked my finger at all the problems this posed...  
...and I could see it crumble within my hands.  
  
But I squeezed his hands and kissed them. I wanted to be with him so much.  
He would let me live another life. One with a real family. One where I could love my child...  
  
...even...  
even if they had a power.  
  
  
Then, that's when my heart beat faster than it had ever had. I almost forgot that in my reveries, I would be destined to die in the end.  
I would have to leave him for I would cause him pain with anything associated to my power...  
  
"I want to..." I shook my head. "...but I can't."  
  
It was then that I abruptly got up from the bathroom to dress in the bathroom as I began to cry.  
Running out the door with much protest from Miki, I ran down the staircase with tears streaming down my face.  
  
Spirals. Everything was going in spirals downward...  
  
Then...  
he grabbed my waist and I stood there on the stairwell as cold as ice. Holding me firmly, he said, "I understand everything that gets in the way...but why, Karen?"  
  
"It's best that you don't know." I looked down to the floor trying not to waver, cry, or fall at my weaknesses.   
  
He sighed and shook his head. He turned me around and put his hands on my cheeks. Looking into those deep brown eyes, he said, "You don't recognize me, do you, Karen?"  
  
Again, he was surprising me.  
  
"What? What are you talking about?" I looked at him in confusion. "I..."  
  
His warm hands felt like they would melt onto my shoulders...  
  
"I've been looking for you all these years?" He then took off his glasses and brought out a picture from his wallet. It was well worn, but it was of a girl on the church steps...  
...with a white dress...  
...and a smile on her face...  
  
"Myself." I barely mumbled.   
That was me.  
  
I looked at him. "Where did you find this?"  
  
It was a picture before my mother had called me a demon that no one would cry for...  
So, from that day on, I refused to cry, especially for myself.  
  
"You gave it to me a long time ago, remember...Kat-chan?" He then leaned closer to me. "You left suddenly and no one told me...and I looked for you for a long time. And then, I see you there, sitting in a bar..."  
  
"All grown up. With eyes that had been scarred." He looked at me even deeper. "And the smile had changed."  
  
Then, he hugged me. "Don't leave me now. Don't ignore me."  
  
Holding me even tighter, I felt his breathe on my neck. "I saw that day. From the church door before your mother came..." Shaking me, he firmly said in desparation, "I don't care if you use can fire! And I don't care where you've been! You don't have to tell me anything! Just...just as long as you are willing to come back to me, Karen."  
  
I didn't ask how, when, or why...  
  
It was then that I hugged him back and remembered that child that had had a crush on me before he knew what a crush was.  
And all the tears I had built a container for gushed out like blood dripping to the floor when you don't treat a wound.  
  
But no matter what we did...it never worked out. Everything was against us, let's just say.  
  
People...things...religion...you could list them all and we'd check them on some invisible list.  
  
In the end, even though he had been forced to marry, it wasn't without telling me either. But I pushed him to do that so he could be happy.  
  
I wanted him to be happy.  
I wanted him to smile the way he had wanted me to smile.   
  
"Promise me that no matter what, you'll always be the same," he had whispered as he left me that night.   
I somehow didn't want him to go. There was something wrong with the whole atmosphere.  
  
Now, there was MY Miki. Buried in the earth.   
  
Instead of a wedding, it was a funeral that everyone attended. He had gotten into a car accident when the rain thundered to the ground relentlessly...  
  
I got up and smiled. "Always smile," he had said to me. "I don't care what you do, but smile the same like before."  
  
No matter what...  
  
When those guests walked away and I had passed them to get to the grave, I heard them whisper, "Until the end, he was calling a girl's name...Karen. Tell Karen..."  
  
When I opened my eyes, I noticed a piece of paper taped to the side of the marker saying, "Never give up. You'll find what you're looking for too."  
  
Smiling, I patted the grave marker. "I promise I won't."  
  
As I got up and did the sign of the cross, I looked up to the sky and closed my umbrella.  
I didn't care if I got wet anymore.  
  
The rain would cry with me today.   
  
And that's when I began to sing a song by Megami Nemutteiruno called "Never Told You",   
  
"At last I had found you,  
but you're gone in an instant.  
Lost in the sea of many,  
I tried to reach out  
Only to be cut down.  
And you were taken away.  
  
What I carry is a gift,  
A gift full of passion and fire,  
I hope you won't forget me.  
I never forgot you.  
  
In the morning,  
you'll forget me,  
and you'll run away   
as you had come.  
You'll go away and   
never come back.  
  
But how I can leave from this place?  
I don't want to let you go  
but I can't hold on,  
slipping, our hands are slipping,  
your grasps is weakening.  
  
Gone.  
  
(Caught in the heavy air,  
I found a tear from me to you,  
passed by the icicles in the air  
falling to the ground  
always to be forgotten.)  
  
At last I had found you,  
but you're gone in an instant.  
Lost in the sea of many,  
I tried to reach out  
Only to be cut down.  
And you were taken away.  
  
As you died in my arms,  
you whispered to me,  
'Despite everything I've done...  
until now...  
You still love me...'  
  
And I cried with my whispers  
taken into the wind around us.  
I never got to tell you.  
I never got to tell you."  
  
  
Like everything else, deep inside of me, I wasn't ready. I was never ready for what was to come except to just accept it with a smile.  
  
Then, as soon as I entered my room, the door closed behind me and I placed my hands on my face with wide eyes. Unable to hold it in, I stood there in the darkness.  
It had hit me finally with full force and I sobbed silently to myself.  
  
"I never got to tell you," I cried and broke my promise. "Not even once..."  
  
That's what I wanted to say all along...  
  
  
--  
Author's note: ;_; 


	5. the power of the gods

disclaimer: X belongs to Clamp. I only would like to ravish a 3D version of my fav. bishounen (Su and Sei and Kamui), but since I can't, here's a fic. ^_~  
  
Deep Inside of You  
by Miyamoto Yui  
  
Chapter 5 - the power of the gods.  
  
"That's what I wanted to say all along." I smirked demurely while snapping my fingers seductively in front of me. Taking his chin between my index finger and thumb, I lifted my own and eyed him carefully like a beast who had not eaten for days.  
  
I was starving.  
  
Inside his eyes, I saw the frightened look that made me feel so powerful. "That's why I love you so much, Kamui," I purred as we touched forehead to forehead. "You're so easy to comply."  
He pulled his face away in slight anger and walked backwards slowly away from me ready to run out of his own room.  
  
"No, you don't mean it, Fuuma," his mouth was saying. "I won't ever believe this is what has become of you."  
  
Plop.  
  
He had fallen back on the bed conveniently as he looked up to me leaning down towards him. My hands placed themselves on either side of him as my right leg obstructed both of his.  
  
Leaning even more forward, my shirt began to hang in midair as my glasses fell on the bed. His open polo was making this very hard to resist touching as beads of sweat fell down his face and slid down the line of his chest. "Fuuma?"  
  
These pleading eyes...  
They're not helping but making more fuel to an open flame. I can breathe your air. You're so close to me, Kamui.  
  
Ignite me.  
I'll consume you, I'll kill you either way.  
  
"What is your wish, Kamui?" I pushed his chest down on the bed as I held his wrists over him. Taking off my belt, I tied it onto the bedpost over him as he tried his best to resist my advances. "Tell me what you want. I can grant it."  
"Fuuma! Stop this Fuuma!" he tried to protest as he stared disbelievingly into my eyes.  
Opening the buttons of his white shirt, I looked down at him and his awesome body...  
  
This boy who held the fate of the world...  
This boy whose body is that of a god...  
  
And I was a god also. Only a different type...maybe the devil...  
  
Placing my hands firmly on his waist, he turned his head away. "Fuuma, stop it! You have to remember!"  
"Remember what?"  
  
One...  
I started to kiss his soft stomach and licked it with my tongue.   
  
"You have to remember me. You have to remember Kotori and me!" He blinked his eyes as he winced in pain.  
  
Two...  
I began to suck on his chest almost gnawing on it. I wanted to eat him...  
He was now bleeding red droplets of blood. And that was even more of an incentive to caress him with my lips while his muscles tightened.  
  
"I won't ever accept this..." he said. Huff. "I still can't believe that you've changed Fuuma."  
  
"Accept it," I immediately answered a bit annoyed as I began to bite his neck.  
  
As I pushed my body on him harder, he closed his eyes and opened them in horror. "Fuuma...ah..."  
  
I want to see you in pain Kamui...I want you to drink my pain...  
  
"Ah!!!" He squeaked. In between the moaning, his voice suddenly changed and broke the already heated air.  
  
"If you want to know my wish, come closer to me," Kamui announced with a sexiness that just energized me to hear more. He looked at me connivingly with red cheeks that were softly touched by the moonlight, like the first time we had seen each other after six years when he acted like a bastard to Kotori and me. Now, the tables had turned.  
  
It was then, his tone went down lower as I nibbled on his ear and replied back just as flirtatiously dark, "Tell me, Kamui."  
He lifted up his head and blew into my ear. "I want to protect, Fuuma and Kotori. Give them back to me."  
My eyes opened wide as he pressed his lips on my own. As his let go of their lock on me, his teeth had caught on my lower lip. I could feel the blood dripping from the small cut.  
  
Then, while looking at me with determined eyes, the belt effortlessly shredded in his hands like flames to the ground as he took my face between his tired hands. Pulling my face, we touched cheek to cheek.  
  
My eyes opened in even more surprise.  
  
Flashes of memories came back to me and flooded me like the blood running cold through my body. I couldn't feel anything anymore but the warmth of his body under mine as he embraced his arms over my back.  
  
Kotori...  
falling from the tree...  
promise...  
  
Kamui...do you know what a bride is?  
I'll protect you.  
I'll keep my promise...  
  
Tomodachi dakara...  
I don't think you should glomp Kamui, Kotori...  
A dream? That's nice...  
  
No, that isn't mother, Kotori...it isn't...  
Mother, where are you? I need you...  
  
All these pictures in my head...and yet I couldn't hold onto any of them. They were swimming like water in a bleached pool in which they were fading and I didn't know which came from where anymore.  
  
No matter what I did, there was always something Kamui would come up from under his sleeve. He always somehow had the upper hand over me. And I couldn't understand it.  
I went around wanting to grant wishes...and yet I couldn't grant his.  
  
My hands trembled as I stared at the red eyes in front of me. In a way, I felt like he was taunting me as he smiled...like he did when we were children.  
When we knew nothing about cruelty in the world...  
Inside my heart, I was breaking, trying to hide it away with an evil smirk...that look of arrogance that maybe only Seishirou could pull off without wincing when he looked at his precious gloved Sumeragi as I had pushed my fingers through his right eye.  
  
I was remembering...  
I was remembering everything...  
from the time I held Kotori when mother died...  
  
And my mind was shattering once again. Everything was falling apart inside of me. My eyebrows shook as a tear emerged and dropped onto a place under Kamui's right eye as if he were the one who was starting to cry.  
A look of hope emerged. "Won't you grant me my wish, Fuuma?"  
  
It was a taunt though I knew he was truly sincere in his attempt to desparately plea with me for that one thing he pined for.   
  
I can't grant it...  
And now, I can't keep from falling apart...  
  
Pushing myself off him, I stood there watching him as he laid on the bed looking at me with eyes that I couldn't describe.  
  
Deep inside of me...you had never gone away. I'm just like a kite, blown by the wind going either which way.  
  
I'm still here Kamui...  
But I'm just sleeping.  
  
Wake me...  
  
By now, I was looking at him as if I were in someone's else body. This wasn't me. This wasn't the Fuuma or the me that Kamui had known...that I had known. It couldn't be.  
  
From all the impact, my body slipped as I reached towards Kamui. "Then Save me Kamui..."  
You know what I desire...only you can grant my wish, isn't it? Aren't you the one who must know all?   
  
I came here to tear you apart in your own dreams as you were sleeping. To undo you...  
And yet...  
  
"This is the power of the gods..." I mumbled in his ear as my face fell next to his while my body weakly hugged his.  
  
--  
Author's note: I'm not one for the pairing...but damn...that's hot.  
I dedicate this to XFuumasLoverX (you never gave me your name... 


	6. No words

Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine. (Only Megami Nemutteiruno from the last chapter.) They're Clamp's.  
  
Deep Inside of You  
by Miyamoto Yui  
  
Chapter 6 - No words.  
  
My body weakly hugged his as my arms draped on his lap. My eyes vacantly looked out before me as I leaned my head on the back my hands.  
  
I could feel there was something different...  
  
The dark Kamui's eyes were holding their look of arrogance that were confident in their stride across the room. But there was a faint feeling of...defeat? I do not know how to articulate this type of thing.   
Being so enclosed, how does one know anything beyond the walls of water? I read somewhere that water in dreams meant that you were swimming through your emotions depending on what happened to that water.   
  
But I do not dream. I just close my eyes to darkness and wake to something close to human existence.  
  
Then what would you count me as? I lived in water. Was I a fish more than a human? Yes, I could say that I was swimming around with no particular purpose.  
My grandfather says I will help in the end of the world...I was important for that.   
But that makes me no better than any deadly weapon in the Earth. Only, I held a human body. Maybe that was more dangerous, isn't it?  
  
It was then that the dark Kamui placed his hand on the top of my head and I felt a soft murmur within myself. It felt like a soft buzz. Something like one of the machines in my grandfather's company.  
  
He then ran his fingers through my hair and I found myself closing my eyes at the dull pleasure it gave me. It felt tingly like the bubbles that ran through the contours of my body when I slept in my bed of running water.  
  
It was a prison ironically with the substance that kept so many things alive. Was I counted as such? I wonder.  
No use in thinking over something as menial as that so I block it from my memory.  
  
"What is it, Nataku? You've been quiet for some time now," the dark Kamui asked with his voice almost purring like that of a coy cat.  
  
After a minute or two of silence, I found myself saying softly, "Different."  
  
"What do you mean?" the dark Kamui ran his fingers through my hair even more carefully than before.  
  
"I..." I tried to say, but since I could not feel anything to justify what I wanted to convey, it was no use and so I became even more silent.  
  
My eyes fell to the ground and I looked everywhere on the floor trying to find the words I couldn't even think of.   
The dark Kamui then took my chin into his index finger and his thumb. Looking at me, he smiled with something that reminded me of compassion...  
  
"Father..." I mumbled before I even thought of the word.  
  
The words...make me recollect of a melody he sang long ago...  
  
"There are as many dreams  
as there are stars.  
Pick one with all your might  
and hold it as long as you can.  
And when the time comes,  
you'll eventually let it go.  
  
I may not always be here,  
but when you see that star,  
I'm always with you.  
I'll always be with you.  
  
Because you are my star.  
  
I will always hold you tight."  
  
Half in a trance, I finally heard the dark Kamui look at me as if...  
as if...  
  
I don't know the word.  
  
Why are there things that I can't say? Why is it that every time I think I should do something, there is something I can never say no matter how much it is at the tip of my tongue.  
  
"You're singing," he said in a low tone.  
  
Was I?   
  
I couldn't even hear myself. I guess it was done so softly...  
  
I sometimes cannot recognize my own voice. I rarely talk, but I always look around and observe what is going around me.  
These humans go about their business as if there is something important to do, but they know very well they're lying to themselves. That's how I stare nonchalantly at them whenever I am in my water underworld. That enclosed place I was supposed to call home.  
  
That cold structure...  
With those eyes glancing back at me with nothing in them. I looked at myself in the same way...  
  
"There you are," the dark Kamui said as if he had the sweet voice of my father.  
  
Blinking my eyes at him, I suddenly remembered the last happy memory of my Father:  
  
We had been playing hide and seek. And my father had acted like I would never find him until I cried so hard that he laughed and said he would never do that again. He said it was a joke, but I had taken it so seriously.  
He convinced me that he would never make me think he could disappear. And not forever...  
  
But he had.  
  
Deep inside of me...  
I was hiding all this time.   
  
The little girl inside of me was still crying from the cruel joke. So numb inside, I couldn't cry anymore. I didn't want to feel anything anymore.  
If I could runaway, that would be fine with me.  
  
And so I forgot...  
I forgot that I too was human.  
  
  
At that moment, the dark Kamui leaned forward and kissed my forehead.  
  
As I remained looking at the dark Kamui in shock, a single droplet of water came from my eyes and he caught it quickly in the palm of his hand. Then, he kissed that also.  
  
  
Still gazing into those eyes, I now understand. I understand my true wish.   
  
It was not to see my father at all.  
For he would always be with me...in this body of mine...forever.   
It's not whether I could talk, smell, feel, touch, and see. I don't have to do anything.  
  
Deep in the shadows of humanity, in the darkness of your heart,  
something more powerful stirred in silence...  
  
  
There really are no words in this world.   
There is no need for them.   
  
Not anymore...  
  
  
--  
Author's note: I tried my best to keep it detatched yet to be strong in a silent way. I hope that it came out this way. 


	7. Because you live there

disclaimer: All characters belong to Clamp.  
  
Deep Inside of You  
by Miyamoto Yui  
  
Chapter 7 - Because you live there.  
  
"I too was human." I mumbled as I petted the metal surface of Beast with my familiar hand. And somehow, I felt that Beast was conforted by this action.   
Unreal as he may have seemed, I loved my world of numbers. This asylum of 1's and 0's had no place in the menial existence that seemed to surround us.  
"But maybe I'm more," I had said outright as my voice stung my ears as it echoed against the walls of my resting chamber.  
  
Taking a deep breath, I said as if in a monotonous plea, "Please let me go, Beast."  
  
The door opened and the exhaust escaped along with my nervousness oozing out the steam. I don't know why I loved enclosed places, but I guess that being in my own world meant that I loved as much as what I could touch. It was within my reach.  
Something tangible...  
  
...like the way the wires ran through my body with ease.   
I think that was my way of feeling loved. I was encapsuled by something that seemed to care about who I was rather than what I could do.  
That also held the same reasoning as to why I liked Kanoe. She never asked anything and let me do as I please. Whenever and whatever I wanted.  
  
But as I got off Beast, I sneaked a peek back and walked out to find myself passing by Kanoe's door, which was left a little open. I had wanted to tell her something until I rose my hand to hear from the inside, "And what do you think of Satsuki, Yuuto?"  
  
My eyes slightly opened wider than what they were accustomed to. I then found myself patting the door in front of me.  
  
"Where did that come from, Kanoe? Are you teasing me?"  
  
Kiss...  
  
I put my hand down and walked towards my own bedroom. There was no use interupting something like that.  
  
And so, I found myself closing the door. I picked up my water bottle on the nightstand and looked about my room as I sat on my bed.  
There were no windows where I slept. It was a nice, neat box of white.   
My sweater of yellow hung to one side of the room with a stand Kanoe had given me. She said I needed more inside my box of a room.  
  
All I could hear was the sigh that had slipped from the depths of my heart as I rubbed against the blanket that I had sat on.  
It was very soft, as it had always been. It was one that my father had given to me. I don't know why I kept it. I guess it was because he had taken care of me in some way, being of my father and all that.  
  
I abruptly got up. I didn't want to think about it.  
  
I took off my shirt and threw it to the laundry basket in the closet. Just to spite myself, I aim for the rim instead of making a swish. Can't have everything too perfect, now can we?  
That just wouldn't be right. It wouldn't be fair.  
Pulling a white shirt from my drawer, I slipped it on and took off my pants. I didn't even bother to throw it and just left a pile on the floor to make my room look lived in.  
After putting on my blue shorts, I walk inside the bathroom and start to brush my teeth. How troublesome that I still have to do this everyday.  
The surface world is like this, isn't it? I used to go up there. I used to live there. But now, I only visit when I feel like it.  
  
Everything up there is boring.  
  
I stare at the mirror in front of me and wash my face. The cold water drips off my face into the floor as I continue to stare at my own reflection.  
How much older I had become. And more years to come.  
I sometimes forget that time progresses when one is not careful. I forget because in a world of 1's and 0's, there is no sense of time. You just know it goes on, but you'll never understand the speed of it all.  
  
Everything in _that_ world loses beauty. And soon it is losing time without even knowing.  
  
But are we more if we know what it is to come? The ending of the world may come tomorrow and there would be nothing I would like to do.  
  
Would I still want to go up there if everything comes to pass? Could I live in a world where things decay...  
  
...where things change?  
  
I shook my head at the thought and these abnormalities that were creeping into my consciousness.  
As I took out my rubberband, I sat on the bed and looked down to the floor. Then, I began to comb my hair.  
  
You do.  
  
I blinked at my own thought.  
  
"You do."  
  
No, I wasn't thinking that. I was actually saying that. I was...  
  
You can't always live here, Satsuki. You'll have to leave someday.  
You can't always stay here.  
  
  
But why now? After all these years with these humans and their games do I want to go back?  
  
Because...  
  
Because he lives there...isn't it?  
  
  
My eyes found themselves blurry. And for the first time in so many years, I felt the pangs of doubt receding from their bubbles floating to the surface of my skin and to my eyes.  
  
She never asked anything of me, but there was nothing to ask if she already took what she wanted. She loved to tease me cruelly with that calm demeanor and I was no different with my nonchalant attitude towards everything. I was a machine myself, wasn't I?   
Wasn't that how I made myself to be?  
  
Doki.  
This part of me within my chest began to ache even more.  
  
I hated Him.  
  
I hated him for making me feel this way. For caring all this time and making me melt with just a touch.  
  
For making me touch the screen and blink my eyes whenever he left me alone in my own, yet cold world to go to the one to where he lived.  
  
Was I really willing to go back, if anything happened, to a world that wanted to exploit me? A world where I felt resentment because they treated me no better than a computer and yet I let myself slip into that also?  
  
Even though he'll probably reject me, stay with Kanoe, or whatever...  
Maybe being this disturbed calmness in tangible form that made up my personality was not bad. You still kept your face behind a mask of illusion.  
That's what humans were.  
  
That's what they all were...  
  
Do you really want to go back there, Satsuki?  
I thought you hated it there.  
  
I thought you wanted to be alone?  
  
  
Deep inside of me, someone was whispering, "No, I don't want to be alone..."  
  
  
I am not alone.  
He made me feel that way ever I first touched him...  
when I had brushed past him...  
  
  
Is this something real?  
I think so...  
  
  
I too am human.   
I looked up to the ceiling of my four-walled room. And now, these words stirred within me with some kind of conceptual meaning.  
  
Opening a drawer, I took out a single, light scarf and held it in my hands. Sniffing it, it still had his scent since the first day he had given it to me. Still holding it in my hand, I turned off the light.  
  
I clenched the scarf tighter in my hands and kept it close to caress my cheek as I made my body contort to that of a ball like a child in a mother's womb.  
  
  
I whispered to myself, "Because You live there."  
  
That's why I'll go back, Yuuto.   
  
--  
Author's note: This was actually very easy to make... 


	8. Sukoshi dake

Disclaimer: X isn't mine. I'm just blindly in love with Seishirou and Subaru that I can't let them die...  
  
Deep Inside of You  
by Miyamoto Yui  
  
Chapter 8 - Sukoshi dake. (A little more...)  
  
"That's why I'll go back, Yuuto."  
  
"Huh? Did you say something, Kanoe?" I asked as I sat in my chair reading my book.   
But there was nothing but silence on her part and I tilted my head in confusion. Then, I shook my head. "I must be hearing things."  
  
But as I read my book, I sighed inwardly. Like the rain that had suddenly trampled down on the Earth these past few days, Kanoe's remark had somewhat disturbed me and caught me off-guard.   
  
"And what do you think of Satsuki, Yuuto?" she had said to me. And I drowned myself in those eyes that seem to pierce me for an answer, but in tone that wasn't supposed to convey jealousy nor accusation.  
  
With my usual casual air, I kissed her and tried to divert the subject. That's what I did best, I think.  
My other powers maybe didn't compare the ones I used on mere mortals. I laughed to myself, "I'm starting to talk like the sakurazukamori."  
  
I didn't understand this secretive factor that had found itself whenever Satsuki-chan was concerned. Maybe I didn't want to. Exploring the answer to this peculiar venture had been just as trifling as trying to get a decent conversation from Satsuki herself.  
  
Inside, I honestly felt a little flustered at it.  
  
She had stumped me and I all I could do was smile.  
  
Then again, being the one who knew how carry on with ladies, Kanoe's question simply could be dismissed as, "You just don't mention two names of girls at the same time."  
It's taboo.  
  
For a man who has walked about in the rain both without and with an umbrella, I knew where I stood my ground. I knew when to push and when to pull.  
  
"Always know what to do," that's my motto.  
  
You can't get around with just talent, as I learned in school. You had to have an intelligent, yet shrewd and enigmatic air about you too.  
  
  
And so, as much as I wanted to concentrate on my book, this illusion of flooding myself with words had come to a halt. When the tranquil water of my thoughts were disturbed, they did not cease until I had found a 'perfect' solution or alternative for it.  
  
I think that's where Satsuki and I share a common bond.  
  
So, I sat there looking at the sleeping and volumptous Kanoe while trying to imagine her with computer-loving Satsuki.  
  
I had seen either's face when I mentioned the other. It wasn't like they were mad at each other, but it was if they were competing...  
  
...and I was in the middle of it.  
  
What an odd thing to think.  
  
I got up and closed the door in back of me not really caring if I was in jogging pants and a pajama top. I just needed to get out of that room.  
  
It seemed like a different scent or a different kind of time lapsing whenever I was with Kanoe. Things seemed to go slow because it was as if she could control time itself.  
  
But I knew otherwise.  
  
Click.  
  
At that moment, without knowing it, I had found Satsuki-chan in front of me. She was rubbing her eyes and put her glasses back on. Her hair, which was always pulled back, fell straight down her cheeks.  
  
She didn't look like herself. Or at least, what I was accustomed to.  
  
"Yuuto-san." She said monotonously though there was a hint of surprise in it.  
  
In the next moment, I found myself smiling and saying, "Let's go take a walk."  
  
"Where?" she inquired with looking at me with blank eyes.  
  
"Logical question." I looked at her while rubbing my chin. Then, I patted her shoulder. "Why don't you choose?"  
  
She pulled her head back as if a little disgusted. Then, she thought about it for a minute and answered finally, "The park."  
  
"What park?"   
  
This was certainly a surprise. I didn't expect her to say that. Usually she hated the surface world.  
  
"You asked me where, now I'll show you." She turned around and walked ahead.  
  
That's Satsuki for you. I almost had forgotten because she looked so different...  
  
I shook my head and laughed. "Very direct as usual."  
  
It was then that we found ourselves in a nearby park that I always passed by while going to work. Satsuki just leaned on a tree while overlooking the pond before her. She looked up to the moon that was shining and breathed a little of the air.  
  
"Wow the rain cleared up." I remarked almost in shock.   
  
Force of habit to start a conversation, I guess.  
  
"This is a nice place." I asked as I stood next to her. "Why'd you pick this park?"  
  
"Because...it is quiet."   
  
"Oh." I nodded in agreement. "I remember going somewhere like this once. When I was little I would go to the park by myself and hide behind the bushes. My sister eventually found me after a long while."  
  
"Why did you hide?" She crossed her arms almost in amusement.  
  
"Because I needed space. I didn't understand it when I was a child and I couldn't describe it..." I then looked at her almost ashamed that I was telling her something so vulnerable about myself. "I guess I wanted that feeling of being looked for. To prove that I was cared for. Very stupid, but it made me happy."  
  
I don't know why I'm telling you this. I can never understand why I feel nervous to be next to you, but calm enough to talk to you about so many things.  
  
"Ah." She responded betraying no sense of emotion.  
  
  
In this contented silence, I simply smiled. There would always be rare moments like this when I would be next to Satsuki-chan and feel like there was nothing else in the world.  
  
And then, I would inwardly frown at this. We...weren't in the same world, in a sense.  
I had always wanted to know and ask her of what did she see in that computer world? That world where she was so removed from the human one that I couldn't pull her back?  
  
Why couldn't I tell her, "Stay here"?  
  
Stay here.  
It sounded so strange. Stay where? In a world where we're going to die so early from? Stay in a world that wanted to exploit her to use for their own demises?  
  
Stay...for my sake?  
That was too selfish and childish. Even for me.  
For the both of us.  
  
It was too much to ask...to say...  
  
Maybe it was because I was a coward. Maybe it was the part of me I never wanted to show anyone. The part where I was vulnerable to the want of being needed.  
Maybe that's why I always smiled or flirted with lots of women...  
  
To feel that I had some power over this want. To satisfy this want falsely, even...  
  
Even if I was lying to myself.  
  
  
With Satsuki-chan, these barriers that binded me inside were lifted. But I never felt like I was talking to a machine either.  
She too was human. And we were making a connection, whatever that may have been.  
  
But deep inside of myself, I knew there was something more to this care of her well-being. The many times I had questioned my concern had become numerous and it had all come to nothing.  
Nothing because all I could do was just stare but not touch her.  
  
With Kanoe, you couldn't do anything but touch her. She made you feel like you needed her...but that wasn't the kind of need I wanted.  
It was more than a physical or sexual need...it was an intellectual one. She always amazed me about how she could read people so well and know exactly what they wanted and needed.  
But then again, her experience as a secretary could have shaped such a woman, and one of an official?  
  
There's more...I know there is.  
I guess I stay with her because...because...I can't-  
  
Satsuki-chan broke the silence and said, "I'll go back now. Thank you for accompanying me."  
  
I didn't want her to go yet. I wanted more time. I could never get enough time to just even look at her.  
Why was there never enough time? People were always with us...issues...work...everything...  
  
  
"Always so polite." I replied half in a joke.  
  
But, maybe there was something about that moment that made us different. And there I found something that I had always searched for...  
  
Satsuki-chan really smiled at me.  
  
"You're welcome." I bowed my head in politeness.  
  
But I...  
I want to touch you...  
Can't keep living like this...  
  
Without care or reason, I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and felt like I couldn't breathe. My heart was beating so fast I thought I was really losing my head.  
  
Satsuki stood there frozen before me. "Yuuto-san?"  
  
I buried my face in her hair and inhaled that sweet scent that only belonged to her.   
  
I know you don't need me, Satsuki-chan. You always know what you are doing and how to do it, but...  
  
I feel that 'want' is gone whenever I'm with you. I don't feel the fake confidence that I always give with a sly smile on my face.  
  
But I was left with nothing.   
I knew nothing about you.   
Nothing at all.  
  
  
I thought I didn't until you smiled at me.  
  
  
All I know is that I like who I am embracing right now. The girl who likes quiet and who loves her computer more than she should.  
  
Just like my sister holding me like this years ago, I held Satsuki tighter. And not really knowing why.  
  
I then whispered to her ear, "Found you."   
  
--  
Author's note: Yuuto...* sighs * I know it seems awkward, but there was something inside of me that just wanted him to touch Satsuki, whatever the consequences.  
  
It took me a long time to figure what I wanted to do, but I'm glad I know now. I thought I was losing focus...and I was. Because of that, I will have to hold out for a while to finish two fanfics so that I make this one just as well as I want it to be.  
  
Thank you for your support so far and I hope I have captured the essence of each of X character that I have already talked about or will in the near future... 


	9. Indistinguishable

disclaimer: X is owned by Clamp. Megami's mine though.  
  
Deep Inside of You  
by Miyamoto Yui  
  
  
When the wind had died down, the pages revealed a feminine hand upon it as it read, "Found you! That's what he said sweetly to me while I was crying my eyes out..."  
  
In an abandoned home, no one no longer resides there. But it was never by choice, as was the tradition. Father slain in the line of family obligations. A mother literally torn into pieces. A son's spirit died like a flame and is enclosed in his silent anger. A daughter who had lost contact with the real world.  
  
No one knew the truth but the ones whose lives were integrated in some sadistic and cruel game of war. A war for and against humanity...  
  
Still, the faded writing remains on that page. It holds onto dear life, but it flips to another page in the bitter end.   
  
Like the girl who wrote her unspoken wishes on lonely paper...  
  
  
Chapter 9 - Indistinguishable.  
  
  
"It's another ordinary day I guess. I should have been sleeping by now, but I couldn't fall into dream world.   
I am looking out of the window right now. And there are so many beautiful stars out tonight.   
But I wonder why I don't feel peaceful. Everything is quiet and I hum to the melody that was playing on the radio. I think it was another new single by Megami Nemuitteruno called, 'Oboeteimasu' (I remember):  
  
'I remember the times  
that seem to be fading from memory.  
Holding hands, no cares  
Holding lies, and truth   
In my hands over to yours.  
I taste the tears that you cried for me  
Today.  
  
This morning, I breathed the air  
and thought you were there  
waiting below the windowsill   
I was leaning from.  
Smiling only for me,  
that gentleness   
that is only yours.  
  
I thought I just saw you  
Walking over to me  
After all these years,  
you tell me that there were none.  
No separation.  
  
Again, the wind sings a song,  
I remember you made me wish,  
a promise,  
a miracle only for me.  
I didn't know what to say  
And so I stood there quietly  
with your warm hand holding mine.  
  
I remember,  
your face...  
  
Your face is fading.  
I'm falling asleep in the rain  
Standing in the middle of nowhere,  
I remember nothing.  
I want to remember your touch...  
Everything.  
  
Even if it's just yoru smile,  
I just want your gentle smile...  
  
That alone,  
I remember now  
in this disease called sorrow.  
  
Do you still remember me?  
Please remember me.'  
  
  
But today isn't an ordinary day is it? Today is Kamui's birthday. And every year since he left, I've been celebrating it quietly to myself.   
I miss him a lot...  
  
I miss him too much.  
  
And every year, I pray just as much to hope that he is safe...  
  
Kamui. It's a name I never say, but always try to think about. Maybe I might not ever see him again, all I can do is hope right? Hope that he hasn't changed.  
  
When I think of you, kindness always comes to mind. But with that thought, I also sigh.  
  
I remember when it was your birthday and you said that we should go to the hill that was on the other side of town. I asked why, but you said that it was a surprise.  
And we both looked at the stars that night.  
  
But even until now, I smile to myself and giggle a little. Oh Kamui...  
  
I remember that time we got lost coming home and you held my hand all the way home. You kept on telling me you'd take me back safe and sound.  
  
I'll protect you, Kotori. That's what you said to me.  
  
And I trusted that completely. Even if you said it until now, I'd still believe it. Whatever it may be...Even if you were wrong...  
  
Looking around the streets like you knew where we were going, I smiled knowing you would.  
But I knew how scared you were. Even though I was scared too, I knew that as long as you were there, it would be all right.  
  
Childish, ne? But we were only how old at the time.  
  
We were scolded by our parents for staying out too late. And Ni-chan even had to explain to us that staying out late was very bad...even though he would have gone if he would.  
  
Ni-chan. I wonder why everyone is scared of you. But you are gentle, and very good to me. You always take good care of me...  
  
But I had a disturbing dream last night. And in that dream, you left me all alone. I almost didn't think it was you until you looked at me with eyes that didn't know me.  
You looked past me. You looked at me as if I weren't there.  
I tried to run and call out for you, but you weren't listening to me. And I found it even more strange when I was running while crying and fell, that someone held my waist to keep me from falling.  
  
I looked up and saw that it was Kamui. Kamui with that smile as if nothing had changed.  
  
You were my age. I was seeing you as if you were really here in front of me.  
And so I was shocked with my mouth not saying anything.  
  
I glanced at the path you were walking, Ni-chan and I gazed at Kamui. I didn't know what to pick, so I was getting frustrated.  
Kamui took my hand and said, "Come on. Let's go."  
  
"Where are we going?" I asked. He smiled again and held my hand tighter.  
"We're going to get Fuuma-chan back." He answered.  
I nodded, but there was a feeling even more sad and confusing than this. "What do you mean we're going to get my Ni-chan back?"  
  
Kamui shook his head and kept on running after Ni-chan. He appeared as if he didn't tell me. That...he couldn't tell me at all.  
  
I wish I could understand this dream. I was very sad that Ni-chan had seemed changed, but I was so happy that Kamui was back here.  
  
Deep inside of me, I still hope that I will see Kamui before anything happens. Because in my dreams, sometimes they come true in real life.  
I don't want this to happen. I tell Ni-chan about these things, but he says not to worry about it. I try not to, but I can't help it.  
  
There is still that feeling.  
  
All these questions I want to still ask father...about mother. I want to ask why there is something blocked out of my memory.  
I want to ask why did Kamui and Aunty go away. I want to ask why I sometimes feel like I shouldn't let go of my brother when he goes to his classroom.  
  
I want to ask why Kamui's face is fading from my memory. And all I can remember now is that assuring smile.  
  
I love you Ni-chan and I love you Kamui.  
Love you too much to let you go so easily...  
  
Maybe what I am scared about is if this feeling of care, tenderness and love will become a fading memory.  
  
Silly as it may seem, I think what I fear the most than losing both of them, is if they   
change to be people that I can no longer recognize.  
  
Ni-chan. I feel like you're going to leave me one day, but I keep on trying to push that thought away.  
  
Kamui.  
You still love Vanilla right? Would you still take care of me? Do you still love me?   
  
I fear especially you, Kamui have been just a love from my memory...  
  
I hope not..."  
  
* teardrop stain *  
  
Through an open window, in the middle of the night, a gust of wind again blows. And it lands on a pencil sketch of a boy. His bangs are covering his face. But from this left profile upon lined paper, a cute, yet embarrassed smile emerges.  
  
And it is signed by the girl,   
"Kamui, I couldn't see you and so you were fading from my mind. But today, you had changed and wouldn't even look at me. *stain* I couldn't even touch you. * drip *  
  
My chest feels so heavy until now. And I couldn't stand to even cry in front of you.   
  
Where did my Kamui go? Maybe my picture is all I have now. This picture I drew and the memory locked inside of me..."  
  
* Teardrop stains crease the edges of the diary*  
  
But, the rain has started to form again with a strong wind. The water from the sky floats on the pages one by one until it makes the pages become smeared with pen marks...  
  
Everything has become indistinguishable.  
  
Never to be read,   
never to be reawakened.  
  
--  
Author's note: I had planned to use someone else, but since Kat has been a good list owner, I decided to dedicate this to her. ^_^ It's her birthday.  
  
I made this while listening to Hyde's 'Shallow Sleep'.  
  
Since Kotori's dead, it was kind of awkward to introduce this. But I think I really like this one because of the mix of alliteration and changes in perspectives. 


	10. Ningen to ningyo

Disclaimer: X belongs to Clamp.  
  
Note: It will be kind of confusing. Hinoto will sometimes refer to moving, but it is only within her mind that she is able to do so.  
  
Deep Inside of You  
by Miyamoto Yui  
  
Chapter 10 - Ningen to ningyo. (Human and doll.)  
  
All memories before coming here have been erased from my heart, never to be reawakened.  
  
What is this strange thought that floats in my unconsciousness? And my eyelids flutter about in confusion.  
  
That's right...   
  
My mind also tells me. It reminds me:  
  
You'll never see it.   
Never touch it.   
Never say it.  
  
What is there left in this crystal ball world in which I am encapsuled in? What is good about being inside imaginary glass?  
  
Nothing but dreams...  
  
A Yumemi sees the future and yet they have none of their own. Manipulated to be something more than human, yet treated less than one.  
Where is this cube, this barrier that keeps a yumemi inside?  
  
Inside yourself, she says.  
  
My dark side embraces me and all I can do is lean back powerless.  
To be deceived by this warmth...to be able to touch someone. Even if it is an illusion of feeling the beating of my own heart.  
  
I did not choose to become a yumemi, it was something my mother had secretly kept to herself. And she had chosen to give me to the government thinking that was the best way to keep me alive.  
  
I wish she had just killed me.  
  
Humans...especially mothers that think that they can do the best for their children. They are more selfish to their weaknesses.   
  
And I am a corpse among the living.  
  
Day after day passes and I sit here waiting painfully in this silence. Only the darkness secedes when I am asked to look for a possibility, these things that are called dreams.  
Even if I had to invade another's, I wandered for years searching for that feeling denied to me.  
  
I cannot see. I cannot speak. I cannot move.  
  
I am nothing but a doll.  
Give me affection when you want to. Hurt me when you can't take it. Lock me up so that I'll never feel the light of day.   
I am always surrounded by darkness. And the darkness has become my friend.  
  
Is it not what you want, Hinoto?  
That's what my other side tells me.  
  
She is the embodiement of what I want to be and want to feel. The insecurities that have accumulated in all these decades and years that have passed. I still have not gotten used to this treatment. I've just been so accustomed to something that could have been worse.  
  
The passion, the light that I seek, I want to see more. Searching through all these dreams whether they are nightmares or something more, I wanted to do more. To feel more than I ever could.  
  
But still, I sit here in the silence.  
This unsteady silence in which my inner chaos can never quench.  
  
"You'll age slowly," the researchers had said to me a long time ago.  
  
That potion was only to keep me alive longer.  
I have already forgotten how old I really am.  
  
They get to live how long or short they want. In the end, Humans always want more and more. They forget that they don't need all these superfluous things.  
  
But I...I who is falsely respected more than one, and treated just as brutally...  
  
I want to take advantage of what life has to give...  
Even a little.  
  
This was what dwelled in the corners of my heart through all the silence inside and outside of myself.  
  
How can a doll learn to love and long for things?  
I cannot.   
It has all been numbed away.  
  
Always putting my head politely, I do not even know how to cry. I've forgotten how.  
  
Who really loves you? The twins?  
Aren't they just here in service to me?  
  
Who really respects you?  
Aren't they just wanting something from you?  
  
Who really cares for you?  
Aren't they just concerned so that they'll get some sort of answers to their questions?  
  
Who really listens to your voice?  
Aren't they just saying things pleasing to your ear so that they won't be in bad terms with you?  
  
Who really touches you?  
Aren't they shocked and curious about why you ended the way you did?  
  
Who really asks what do _you_ want?  
  
No one.  
No one but myself. Even if it's this abyss inside my own heart.  
  
Looking at my reflection, I am being pulled in. Resisting outwardly, but I know otherwise. How can you deny yourself these emotions?  
  
  
I was human too. I know I was...  
  
  
"Hinoto! Hinoto Onee-chan!" she had screamed while pulling away from Mother.  
Kanoe! But I could not speak.  
"Don't take her away! Mother do something!"  
Mother was holding onto her tightly.  
"They won't take care of her, Mother!! Get her back!!!"  
It is too late, Kanoe...  
  
  
Your wish won't be fulfilled. I'm so sorry...  
  
  
"I can take you away, Hinoto-hime," one mad had said.  
But you aren't sincere.  
  
  
"I will listen to your please. There must be something," a woman had said.  
But you will end up asking me for your own answers.  
  
  
"Can I not care for you?" some senator had asked.  
You cannot even take care of yourself. You ended coming to ask me questions, didn't you?  
  
"I respect you deeply." a company president had said.  
Because of what I can do.  
  
  
"I love you." someone had whispered.  
You liar.  
  
  
So many answers and just as many questions without conclusions.   
  
I know more than anyone that a dream is more than a mere dream. A yumemi feels the inner yearning that other people cannot see.   
  
It is almost like seeing someone's heart transparently.  
There are no mysteries.  
  
In the process, though, a yumemi also denies their own...  
  
And so I have become dependent on others and their dreams because I cannot have my own. Like a parasite I crawl silently through countless reveries. I depend on their emotions so that I may see something that I'll never feel...  
  
  
I am truly just a doll.  
Not human at all.  
  
But deep, very deep inside myself...  
  
I...  
I want to live freely. Even as decrepit as this...  
That's all...  
  
To see one ray of sunshine.  
To touch a flower.  
To taste something more than tears.  
To hear someone say, "It's okay."  
To feel someone else's heart.  
To actually say, "Thank you with all my heart."  
  
And Kanoe...  
I...I do not know.  
  
You seek for something that can never be saved.  
  
  
Maybe I do also.  
I long for something impossible...  
  
  
Then, I remembered the only thing that counted as my moment of happiness:  
  
One day when I had turned away and faced the wall behind me, the twins had gone out for a bit and there was Saiki left alone with me.  
  
And I could feel him kneeling before me with his head down.  
  
"Hinoto-hime?" he had asked. "May I ask you a question?"  
  
"Yes, Saiki-dono." I nodded my head.  
  
"Why are facing the wall?" he innocently asked.  
  
"I just wanted to do something different..." Then, I turned my head, "Maybe, it is like when you bow your head to me."  
  
"Sumimasen." That's all he could say to me and he had become flustered.  
  
"Do you only bow your head because I am Hinoto-hime?" I had asked.  
  
"No..." he trailed off.  
  
I liked this boy. He was quiet, but obedient to every one of my whims.  
He had always been honest with me.  
  
"Can I ask you something?"  
  
"Yes, of course."  
  
'Anything' his mind had said...  
  
  
I turned around to face him. "How do I look like to you?"  
  
Then, I could feel like his temperature had risen when he answered, "You have long white hair and wear a pretty white kimono. Your eyes are red along with your lips..."  
  
He then said, "You are very beautiful."  
  
Then, to blurted out, "Hinoto-hime? What do you really want? Is there anything I can do for you?"  
  
  
And I gasped.  
  
Simple and ordinary. But I could feel the nervousness around him as if he would melt with what he said.  
  
The unspoken words that vibrated from his being.  
  
A boy...  
he was the only who could understand the things I could never even begin to think of saying...  
  
"Saiki-dono..." I mumbled.  
  
If I could cry, I would have. If I could smile, I would have. If I could touch his hand to tell him thank you, I would have.  
  
These simple things that people took forgranted, I cherished with all my heart.  
  
  
He didn't come in here for anything...  
He wanted nothing from me...  
  
I think that was what made my heart happier than I could ever feel and eased the loneliness of being alone in the darkness all these long years.  
I think that was also the saddest moment in my life, even more painful than when Kanoe shouted for me to return to her...  
  
I realized at that moment something that had stabbed me more than being alone in my head...  
  
Even with all the power I had...  
Even with all the visions I had to predict for this world...  
  
In the end, I could do nothing.   
I could only sit and watch everything around me quietly.   
  
  
I am a beautiful, broken doll.   
  
  
--  
  
Author's note: Hinoto's personality and circumstances are very very different than from any other character in the whole series. And so I kept on thinking, "What is Hinoto-san's most important part? What is it that makes her so vulnerable also?"  
And this was what came out. Hinoto is more than human and yet she is treated less than one. The contrasts deeply intrigued me and so her inner struggle was the drive for this story.  
  
I've learned that I like the characters more after doing their chapters...  
  
It's such a mysterious thing how life circles. One of my first published poems was called "Broken Doll"...because I used to think about myself this way... 


	11. Never enough

Disclaimer: X is by Clamp and therefore not mine.  
  
Deep Inside of You  
by Miyamoto Yui  
  
  
Chapter 11 - Never enough.   
  
  
  
A sudden thought came to pass within me, "I am a beautiful, broken doll."   
  
I immediately looked at Hinoto-hime who had been always sitting in her chamber like a living preservation. The silky curtains that bathed her little area fell in perfect disarray just like her long, white hair.  
  
To me, she always seemed like she was in quiet chaos.   
She wasn't only fighting Tokyo.  
  
She was fighting herself.  
  
As I was. Fighting her...myself...  
fighting the things I should and shouldn't do.  
  
  
"Pardon me, Hinoto-hime?" I had said as I gulped at the same time while kneeling before her. "Was there something you needed?"  
  
"You heard me, didn't you, Saiki-dono?" A sweet voice had entered into my head once again and all I could do was become dumbfounded.  
  
I...I didn't mean to.  
This sometimes happens...  
  
Was it because my feelings were strong enough to penetrate into hers?  
Impossible...  
  
  
Even more fortunate for me, thankfully the two were not here. They would have certainly given me a look for addressing the Princess in such a 'casual' way.  
  
"Heard what?" I innocently asked.  
  
"What I just said to myself."  
  
Soft tap.  
My hands slightly fell to the ground. I looked to the floor though she could not have seen me do so. She could only feel me...  
And my stomach began to become twisted into knots. They stretching and stretching inside of me.  
  
It was stupid, but I always felt like I wanted to cry in front of her. It wasn't because I was cowardly...  
  
...it was because I wish we could have switched places.  
  
If only I could give her-  
  
"I...I did, Hinoto-hime." I swallowed hard and still looked down to the floor.  
  
"Saiki-dono? Why are looking to the floor?"  
  
"Because..." I sighed inwardly.  
  
How can I tell you my answers while my heart is beating faster and faster and I'm trembling like I'm going to pass out? How can I articulate all these thoughts passing in a flash flood in my veins to my heart and not reaching my head?  
How can I-  
  
"You are always honest to me, Saiki-dono. Please tell me."  
  
Her words echoed to me like a plea that weighed as much as the depth of a tear.  
"Oshiete kudasai," her voice repeated in my mind.  
  
"Your eyes...it's because of your eyes."  
  
"Are they also broken? I cannot tell."  
  
I shook my head knowing full well she couldn't see me at all. "They stare blankly back at me. I see my own reflection when I really look at you."  
  
I see myself.  
  
I closed my eyes and sighed. It wasn't frustration at all. It was trying to say how much I cared in a single beat.  
But I couldn't. I had no words to say everything.  
I had no way of touching her...  
  
I had nothing.  
  
I was just a boy put into her service.  
  
Someone who had loved her before he had even known what loving someone meant. She was inside my skin, etched into my heart...  
  
After all these years I've being so silent, I could no longer even say anything. She had become a part of me.  
  
  
All of this beyond words.  
Pouring invisibly like blood before me, but...  
  
nonetheless beyond anything I could ever say.  
  
  
"Is that so bad to look at yourself?"  
  
She was like a little girl and a woman at the same time. Asking questions that could and couldn't be answered. Much less by me.  
  
I couldn't do anything but be honest.  
  
I blurted, "No, it is because I cannot see _you_."  
  
I immediately bowed my head. "I'm so sorry for my rudeness."  
  
"No, it was not rude...not at all..."  
  
Silence.  
  
"Look at me, Saiki-dono."  
  
Her hair fell a bit on her face, but I was shocked. The red metal plates for eyes had tears streaming from the sides.  
  
"I've made you cry, Hinoto-hime! Forgive me!" I bowed over and over. "Please forgive me!"  
  
And my heart cringed deep inside my chest. I wish I could have killed it so that she would stop crying. I wanted to cry.  
  
This is so much than aching to touch you when you're near. You won't even feel it.  
  
She answered, "No. It isn't that."  
  
I want to say that you are not a broken doll. Not at all.  
  
"Then why are you crying?"  
  
"Because you were the one who had told me I was beautiful. I don't know what beautiful is...but that is one word you always seem to think whenever I'm with you."  
  
I opened my eyes wider and blushed while feeling my face become warm with aspiration.  
  
"I-I..." I stammered. Then, I said, "I was only saying the truth."  
  
"Even...even if I'm broken, Saiki?" Even more tears fell from the side of her face.  
  
I nodded without thinking twice. "Even if you are broken. If I had a choice, I would find a way to..."  
Then I stopped.  
  
"To what?"  
  
"I would find a way to take you from here if I could."  
  
"You wouldn't try to change me, Saiki?"  
  
Ache.  
How much I love you more for calling me without the 'dono'.  
  
"If I did, Hinoto-hime, then that wouldn't be my Hinoto-hime now, wouldn't it?"  
  
'My' Hinoto-hime...  
My heart could have just jumped from my chest right then. I was overflowing but I didn't know what to say or what to do or what to think!  
  
"Saiki-dono..."  
  
There! There's that voice and that certain look...  
The one that always tells me that she wants to do something that she cannot do. The one where I'm the one falling apart in front of her.  
I die in my mind while kneeling before her every time she did that...  
  
"Why? Why would you do that, Saiki?"  
  
"Because I...I..."  
  
  
"Close your eyes and don't look at me, Saiki."  
  
It was then that I was in a black dimension and I turned around to see Hinoto-hime kneeling before me.  
But...  
  
her eyes were her own. She was looking directly at me.  
  
She took my hand and I melted right then.  
  
Then, she closed her eyes to bow and say sweetly, "Thank you, Saiki."  
  
I shook my head. "You shouldn't thank me. I haven't done anything."  
  
"You always tell me the truth..."  
Then, she began to cry as she looked straight at me. "You never ask anything from me. Never!"  
  
I had never heard her voice sound so desparate before...  
  
"I have nothing to give to you, Hinoto-hime." Then, I looked to the ground and smiled. "When I first came here, I thought that and said there was nothing a boy could do for a dreamseer. But as the years passed, I realized that telling the truth was all I could do. To do anything for you...that was all I wanted."  
  
Before I could say anything else, she let and I was back in the room staring at the beautiful broken doll before me.  
  
  
How can I put into words...  
that deep inside of me...  
I had been searching to be someone that could be worthy of loving you?  
  
For if I told you, how can you love someone like me back?  
  
  
Not as a sister,  
Not as a someone I give my servitude to,  
Not as a yumemi.  
  
No, You.  
The you that is only human.  
The you that no one seems to know and only I do whenever we're alone.  
  
  
And what's even worse...  
...is that I can't tell you.  
  
I can't even show you.  
  
  
Do you know how it feels like to be on the brink of crying because you want to pour yourself out but can't? That through crying, you say all the words that you can never say?  
  
If you did, Hinoto-hime, you'd realize what I'm really trying to show you from every part of my being in service to you. I gave you all mind, heart, and soul.  
  
Whenever I'm with you, even in this perpetual silence, nothing else matters to me. Nothing means more to me either.  
Deep inside of me, I only think of you and I forget about myself...  
I forget that we live into different worlds.  
  
I-I can't even breathe anymore. Everything is suffocating me.   
People coming in and out of here.  
The war for humanity.  
Fighting against myself.  
  
Wanting to be more than I am.  
  
Wanting to be able to...  
To...  
  
Sigh.  
  
I stood up and tore some of my sleeve. As I patted her face, I felt the cold skin against my hands. The tears soaked onto my sleeve and I looked again at those two blank slates for red eyes.  
  
That was the breaking point.  
  
I began to cry myself.   
Then, I enwrapped both my arms around her shoulders.  
  
Maybe I was defiling you with my weakness.  
  
"I'm sorry, Hinoto-hime."  
  
I didn't know if I was saying this to myself, in my mind, or even why. I was so confused.  
  
  
I could still see the stream of her tears that had been cried.  
  
  
"Why...why can't I do anything?"  
No matter what I do, it is useless.  
  
  
Even now I realize that despite knowing the future and all the things you can do, you don't know everything, Hinoto-hime...  
  
  
Ache.  
  
You don't know how much I love you.  
  
"My beautiful broken doll," I whispered to her ear.  
I embraced her even more as I sobbed silently just as much.   
  
  
  
But that doesn't seem to be enough.  
It will _never_ be enough.  
  
  
  
  
--  
Author's note: Whoa. I...I haven't felt this moved since 'When You Blink' for Gravitation.  
I wanted to cry so much and I felt like I was Saiki talking to Hinoto trying to say things that I couldn't. It's a bit sappy, but I couldn't interpret his feelings any other way. I was holding my breath the whole time.   
This is dedicated to you, Ammie, because you like him so much. ^_^ 


	12. still reaching for you

disclaimer: X isn't mine.  
  
Deep Inside of You  
by Miyamoto Yui  
  
  
Chapter 12 - still reaching for you.  
  
"But that doesn't seem to be enough. It will _never_ be enough?" I repeated quietly to myself.  
  
I didn't know if I really heard a boy's voice at this moment or had I again circled back into this single thought.  
  
It was then that through the shadows, I saw something surreal. A boy was holding onto my sister.  
But it was strange.  
  
I saw two things coinciding:   
  
The boy was embracing my sister as she stood still in her chambers.  
But also, I saw that in sync as if in a dream, she was holding onto him as her chest was bleeding. Her white kimono had also stained his school uniform.  
  
It was where her heart was.  
  
  
It had to be a dream. But I wouldn't have been able to enter if it were not a dream.  
  
This puzzled me for a bit.  
  
"This could not be a reality...or could it?" I whispered slowly to myself as my eyes wouldn't stop staring at the vision before me.  
  
My eyebrows came a little bit closer together as my eyes stuck daggers into that little boy in front of my Onee-san.  
That's right. MINE.  
  
NOT YOURS...  
  
How could he hold her like that? How can you even begin to think that someone as high as she will ever fall for someone as lowly as you?  
  
Hmph!   
  
My mouth smirked and I left them alone.   
  
I opened my eyes and put my hand to my cheek while laughing. "How could I be jealous of a little boy? How childish. Ahahahaha..."  
  
He couldn't take her away from. I wouldn't let him.  
Even if he were god himself.  
  
No one will EVER take her away from me again...  
  
My heart stirred in anger and it was just then that I sat up abruptly. Just as quickly, the sudden movements of my body were executed too fast and so my head became a little dizzy.  
  
"No..." I started to whimper as I cupped half of my face. The mark on my head began to protrude forth as if a vein were ready to gush out.  
  
Ow!  
  
The only that connected me to her...  
Painful as this...  
  
  
"Ahhh...." I began to agonize as my headache became even more painful.  
  
Pictures...  
  
Reaching. My hand reaching out.  
  
"Who is that?"   
"Your sister."  
"But she looks like a doll."  
"She is paralyzed, blind, and deaf..."  
  
  
Blink.  
  
"Onee-chan?"  
No response.  
"I want to play with you."  
Even more silence.  
"I'll comb your hair then."  
  
Slap!  
"Don't touch her Kanoe!"  
  
  
Hug.  
"No matter what, I will always have you, won't I Onee-chan?"  
I thought I saw her smile.  
  
  
Reaching...  
restless...  
torn and tattered...  
Right before my eyes...  
"Hinoto! Hinoto Onee-chan!" my childish voice shouted in an inhuman cry. Over and over, I screamed as I were losing my mind. "Hinoto! Hinoto Onee-chan!"  
Mother held me closer to her.  
I cried and cried. Why can't I ever hear the voice that they can hear from you?!  
"Don't take her away!" I pulled on Mother's sleeves. "MOTHER DO SOMETHING!!!"  
Mother held me in an even tighter death lock.  
"They won't take care of her, Mother!! GET HER BACK!!!"   
  
My mother slapped me for acting hysterically but there I cried. I shouted, "You said you'd always stay with me! You promised Onee-chan!!!"  
  
Then, as the car drove away, with tears flying from the sides of my face, I held my hands in fists and shouted, "I NEED YOU ONEEEE-CHAAAAANNNNNNN!"  
  
"Kanoe... It is too late, Kanoe."  
  
"Huh?" I stopped crying as I looked around curiously.  
Was that voice from my head?  
"I will always be with you, Kanoe. Remember that."  
  
"Onee...chan?" I whispered as my hand reached out impossibly to catch her as the car turned on the corner.  
  
  
That was the first time I had ever heard her voice.  
It was also the last time I promised myself I wouldn't cry.  
  
No matter what, I would never cry.  
Because, whenever I saw or talked to my onee-chan, she was crying inside...  
  
From then on, I learned how to smile at people and play whatever game they wanted. But I always had the upper hand.  
  
I would live the life that she would never get to have...  
  
  
You would not approve of me, wouldn't you, Onee-san?  
  
Another memory relapsed and I held my covers even closer to me as I shook like a bird in the cold.  
  
Thrown.  
Holding onto one of the last robes I had saved before the help had burned them all, I prayed to her as if she were a goddess. For indeed, she was mine.  
"You've got to help me, please...they..."  
I couldn't even finish my sentence as my tears took over.  
My torn clothes barely hugged my body and I held myself just as ragged.  
"Please help me!"  
  
ANYTHING.  
I would do anything to get my way.   
  
Tear a person's heart out. Smile at whomever needed one.  
Use my body to get further...  
  
I knew how people worked and how to work them. They had done the same thing to you. I will recompensate them on that part.  
No one will get away from my grasps.  
  
"Oh, Kanoe-san is such a good student..."  
"Always on the top of everything..."  
"Knows how to run her committees..."  
  
"What can you do for me?" I would ask all my suitors and all the others that wanted my help in anything.  
"I'll give you..."  
  
Everything's a deal.  
I don't care how I get there.  
  
  
I don't give a damn.  
  
  
But how to find you? I wondered and wondered. I researched until my fingers became embedded with paper cuts and my eyes were to fall out from staring at everything for so long.  
  
"Government secret?" Looking at my university, I held my arms together. "I know how to get to you, Onee-san."  
  
After all these years, I will find you.  
I will get to you one day.  
  
I will crush humanity within my grasps if I can.  
I will.  
I know I will.  
  
You are too kind to them.  
I cannot forgive them. For what they did to you and for what they did to me.  
  
  
"Don't do it, Kanoe, or else you will fall into the same fate as me," she had said.  
We had talked via telepathy since the day she had left.  
"No..." I shook my head.   
  
I prayed for that mark on my head to come out...  
even if it was from selling my soul to the devil himself.  
  
Anything to get to you, Onee-san.  
ANYTHING at all...  
  
  
Always so resilient. Also show charisma, charm, and seductiveness. Know the ways of the world.  
You lie to everyone. Tell them what they want to hear.  
Everyone just cares about themselves anyway...  
  
"That's not true," a voice had suddenly said in my mind.  
  
I opened my eyes wider. "For me, it is. I believe it."  
  
"Oh, Kanoe..."  
  
  
And I left it at that.  
  
Whenever I think I'm going to conquer the world, she comes back suddenly to tell me that the way I'm going about it is wrong.  
But I'm just playing the world's rules, Onee-san.  
  
I deceive everyone by pretending to be the chameleon that adjusts herself to her surroundings. I look strong, but indeed, I'm very weak.  
  
I even grew my hair to become more like you, my onee-san.  
  
I sold my soul to be able to reach you even if they were only in dreams...  
  
  
  
As Yuuto came into the room, he came right over next to me on the bed and laid his arms around me. "Are you all right? I think you should just lie down."  
  
My tangled hair shook as my head turned from side to side. I looked up to that handsome face.  
  
As my head fell onto his chest, I wouldn't even show my crying face to him.  
My pride wouldn't let me.  
  
"What is wrong?" Yuuto's concerned voice said. "Kanoe..."  
  
At that moment, I closed my eyes. Like a child, I held onto his sleeve.   
For all my insecurities...  
  
I thought you would be the one to understand...  
I thought i would be able to tell you them, Yuuto...  
because I could never tell her.  
  
  
You were the only one that seemed so sincere to me...  
That's why I always pulled you to kiss me.   
  
But as much as I liked Satsuki...  
With all my doubts, this silent battle with her had finally ended.  
  
Yuuto...  
why do you have Satsuki's scent on your shirt?  
  
  
Deep inside of myself, I know I am only deceiving myself.   
I will always be looking for you. I will always be the shadow under your moonlight, Onee-san.   
But in between all these thoughts, visions, and actions meshed together, I've lost myself in the seams.  
  
I've become so vulnerable.  
  
  
Instead, I've given the world everything.  
My body. My mind.   
My soul. My onee-san.  
  
  
I won't give my heart.   
I promised that same night to you that I'd never cry and that I'd find you one day.  
  
  
Years later, here I am...  
  
I still haven't gotten you back.   
And I haven't even found myself yet.  
  
  
A forgotten, yet single tear fell onto Yuuto's shirt...  
  
  
That's right little boy. It will never be enough.  
Love isn't enough to save your soul...  
  
  
Like a little child that was so confused, at that moment, I didn't know if I mumbled or really thought,   
"I'm sorry I broke my promise."   
  
--  
Author's note: Yeah, Kanoe's not one of favorites. She actually scares me.  
But, I thought that I had to do a chapter on her. "If I can make her more 'human', than I can convince myself to like her. Even in a fanfic."  
  
Though I'm still unsatisfied with this, I am glad that I focused on her relationship with her sister. ^_^  
And why does Yuuto have Satsuki's scent? Think what you want but I really meant it in all innocence that he had hugged her for too long. But I guess the other interpretation works too. ^^;;;  
  
While I was making this, I was listening to DDR's 'Moonlight Shadow.' Listen to it if you ever get the chance. "Will you come to talk to me this night? But she couldn't how to push through..." 


	13. I justify my love for you

Disclaimer: X isn't mine, but I love the characters as if they were.  
  
Deep Inside of You  
by Miyamoto Yui  
  
  
In the dead of night, someone sighed as they took a walkman from some corner of their dresser.  
Putting on the headphones, the person closed their eyes to enter into even more clouded darkness through a guiding voice.  
  
A voice...  
that when one remembers what reopens a wound,  
must they forget it to regain their sanity?  
  
But isn't that just as hard?  
  
Trying to convey all your mixed thoughts into a single translucent pattern, yet knowing it is weaving an even greater problem.  
  
What is etched in the heart can never erased or torn away...  
Whether it is love or hate...  
  
  
It's a recording.   
Only you may not need the tape anymore  
to hear it...  
  
  
  
Chapter 13 - I justify my love for you.  
  
  
  
The old broken cassette had played,   
  
"'I'm sorry I broke my promise.' A song which is by none other than myself!" The girl then giggled as if her hand were over her mouth, so the sound was sort of muffled.  
  
But everything was already scratchy. What was it? An overplayed tape of nine years wasn't it?  
  
"Never thought I'd have to record this to you after all these years. I recorded this with mom's song too. So that you won't forget.  
  
So that you won't forget me too.   
  
But how can you ever forget me? I've been with you since birth! And all the years after it were wonderful.   
I didn't enjoy the times you cried, but giving you a smile was all I could do. How could I possibly say, 'Hey, cheer up! There's a bright side to everything!" when I know that day you had seen one of your friends killed.  
Or the time that I first saw your gloves and you were crying so hard that I wanted to kill whomever did that to you. I will...  
  
*with a vindictive and clear tone of threat * I promise I will. No matter what.  
  
No one hurts MY SUBARU and gets away with it. There's just no way!   
Hahahaha! To think that I've been mad all these years and try to brush it off with just laughing.  
  
"Look at that weird girl!" I got all my life.   
But there was nothing I could possibly say but, "Where? Looked in a mirror lately? Oh, that's right, you have to put on your face every morning. My cuteness is all-natural. Goodbye~!"   
Leave with a big grin. Nothing would make sense but to me and that was just fine with me.  
  
You were all I cared about.  
  
You were so boring Subaru. If I left all our wardrobe to you, we'd be wearing black all the time. And damn! I'm not dead yet! And I'm not going to a funeral!  
  
* silence *  
  
You fool! I can't say all I want in this stupid tape. It's too small! A Soni 60 minute tape is NOT gonna cut it. Not even the 120 minute kind.   
What I need to say and what I want to say are so much longer. Plus, you know I won't get to the point until I worked my way through the bushes.  
  
I know you hate that.  
I know you're squirming, seeing that I'm doing that now.  
  
But what do I want to say? I know I made this recording just at the spur of the moment.   
  
You're sitting in your chair like a doll. And you're not talking to me. Who else am I supposed to talk to?  
  
How is that supposed to make me feel, Subaru? Tell me!  
  
  
Oshienasai!!!  
  
  
* sniff, sniff * * blows nose *  
  
  
I can't go in there with a smile anymore. I'm going to cry. Cry all the tears that you wouldn't let me cry.   
Crying all the tears that I never let myself cry.  
  
You pushed me away when his eye was slashed. You pounded on the door and all I could was watch.  
  
It was then that I truly realized: That's all I do, Subaru.   
  
All these years, deep inside of myself, despite everything and my fears, I've done nothing. You wouldn't let me.   
  
All I do is watch you.  
  
That's all I CAN do.  
  
You think that if you don't tell me everything that that's any better? It actually made me feel worse to tell you the truth.  
For the times I've laughed, I've cried silently just as much.  
  
I can't take this! You're just sitting in the chair.  
  
  
Lifeless.  
  
  
I want to slap you and shake you while crying. "Where is MY SUBARU?!"  
  
  
That's the question that is screaming from the depths of my soul.  
  
  
"What have you done, Seishirou?! I don't understand what you've done but why can't I find my Subaru!?!? Where did you take him?!   
  
GIVE HIM BACK TO ME, DAMMIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"  
  
I want to scream and I want to laugh like a hysteric.  
  
But I know the truth. I knew exactly what had happened.  
  
* in a low tone * I also know what will happen...  
  
  
And I don't want this doll that looks like my twin brother.  
This is _not_ my Subaru.  
  
Where have you gone?  
  
Damn, I don't even know where you've been...  
  
  
I met someone like that Subaru. He was inside of dreams.  
  
He is a yumemi with powers that push him from others like ourselves.  
  
  
Kakyou...  
he said he wanted me to go with him. To take him outside.  
  
But where was outside?  
It was still within his mind. He never knew what was life outside of his mind.  
  
  
I can't stand to live like that Subaru.  
I need to breathe. Need to talk.  
  
I can't stand here and watch you throw your life away.   
  
Why do you think I've tried to be rambunctious? Even your other half can show you what life is.  
Even if only that.  
  
  
Kakyou showed me a side of myself that I tried to ignore...  
  
To go outside.  
  
As strong as I liked him, as much as I love you, I drowned myself...  
Does this make any sense to you?  
  
I looked at you all these years.  
I forgot myself. Whatever made you happy made me happy.  
  
Remember that time that you wanted the teddy bear from the festival? You were trying so hard, but tried to smile at me when you couldn't get it. Then, you had to leave.  
  
I made it my mission to get it for you. It took me how much time, money and effort to win it for you.  
  
You went home because you had to train. And I stayed at the festival.  
  
It was always like that. You always had to sacrifice because of the name.  
And I had to find some way to make up for it.  
  
Was I wrong to do that?  
I never thought so.  
  
And each time I thought that, you showed me that I had made the right decision.  
  
At that time, You loved that bear until it turned into rags. * laughs * I was so happy. I forgot to get one for myself...  
but that was enough for me.  
  
I only dressed 'strangely' because, well, that's the only thing that could distinguish us. This was what made me, me.  
Because after that momentous day of, "Please always take care of Subaru-san," grandmother ordered as she squeezed my hand.  
  
I knew that. I had always known that.  
  
But it wasn't until I saw you crying by the sakura trees on your gloves did I realize that it was more than a repeated, yet gentle push.  
  
It would be a way of life.  
  
And the only thing I asked back was a smile, Subaru.   
That's all.  
  
That's what told me why I was here.  
Why we're twins...  
Why we were closer than anyone in the world...  
  
I didn't need anyone else.  
I foolishly thought you were thinking the same.  
  
I had myself.  
I had you.  
And now, we had Sei-chan...despite my conflicting feelings...  
  
But the more I saw you and him together, the more I laughed. It was the more jealous I had become, and the more hurt, and the more far away I felt from you.  
  
  
He had been able to touch you in a way that I never could.  
  
  
And because I couldn't call you back from that, I knew I had some how lost this quiet war him...ourselves...and especially within myself.  
  
  
I remember one time you said, "Hokuto-chan?"  
I nodded my head and smiled. "Yes, Subaru?"  
"I promise we'll always be together!" you had said as you smiled and glomped me.  
  
But that was when we were four.  
  
Before they told you what an heir was.  
  
Before you lost that smile that I loved so well.  
  
Years later when you received thosed cursed gloves, I made a song. It would be the song I'd always sing to you. And as the years went on, I added more stanzas...  
  
  
"I need to know.  
I need to feel.  
I need to know.  
I need to feel.  
  
Been looking for you   
all this time.  
But how can that be  
when you're right   
in front of me?  
  
Dreamt yesterday that   
You left me  
Cruel unintentional smile,  
Cut me like a dagger  
You yourself plunged forth.  
Into me.  
Into yourself  
Into me.  
  
I had forgotten  
to smile one day  
and you looked strange  
you were looking  
At yourself,  
weren't you?  
  
Want to scream  
It's not your fault  
No blaming  
Just need to live on.  
  
You promised me  
you'd be with me  
for always.  
  
I gave you all my heart  
but that is not enough.  
Gave my mind.  
But that is not enough.  
Gave my soul.  
Still not enough.  
Need to climb  
a never ending journey  
and you're still so  
far away  
from me.  
From me.  
from me.  
  
[whisper]  
You need to know  
I need to feel.  
I need to know  
You need to feel.  
  
You broke your promise.  
  
*shuffle, shuffle*  
  
As I put on this outfit,  
did you know  
white means  
Death in Chinese?  
Hoku, when the   
north wind blows  
brings death.  
  
I knew all along.  
The yumemi told me long ago.  
I had no other day  
except the present.  
  
I guess there was   
something I couldn't  
also tell you.  
  
* cries *  
  
You...  
  
I justify my love for you.  
  
This is enough,  
Subaru.  
  
You will someday understand  
and come running to me again.  
  
But I broke   
the promise too,  
I'll not be here.  
  
And you'll forget  
for a time  
that I'm   
just here,  
just need to heal,  
just nead to hear  
just need to feel  
in your heart.  
  
I'll slip this in your pocket  
as I hold you again.  
I'll pretend with a smile  
remember me  
Subaru.  
  
You've forgotten me when   
Sei-chan touched you,  
that I kissed those hands first.  
You've forgotten that when  
you laughed,  
I was the first to poke you.  
You've forgotten already  
that I dress you  
because you forget yourself.  
You've forgotten that   
your heart  
was once mine.  
  
Mine, Subaru.  
  
so many things to say.  
  
Let it not be in vain.  
I'll always be with you...  
  
Have you already forgotten me...  
for him?  
  
Deep inside of myself,  
I'm looking for you and me...  
  
  
His love is   
different from   
my own.  
  
  
I'm sorry,  
but you'll have  
to choose someday.  
  
  
I justify my love for you.  
  
Isn't this enough,  
Subaru?  
  
  
[spoken whisper]  
You're out of touch.  
And I'm out of time.  
  
  
* click *  
  
  
--  
Author's note: I should have put more, but I didn't want to take away from the fact that this was Hokuto talking to Subaru. If I had put Subaru in here, I think it wouldn't have been as effective.  
The hastiness, the tone, the confusion was all meshed together. Hokuto was running out of time and I wanted to convey that she was angry and sad and frustrated that she couldn't say it all.  
And would Subaru truly understand everything? As much as I love Subaru, there's some part of me as an older sister myself that he would never understand...  
  
Oh, and this is chapter 13. 13 isn't a lucky number in some cultures along with 4 and 6 too in some religions...  
Yes, yes, I've put too much into it. But I love Hokuto. Her abrupt, yet sarcastic and innocent humor are very endearing. You can tell she is one of my favorite female characters in all anime/manga along with Satsuki, huh? ^_~ 


	14. Memory in the rain

Disclaimer: X is Clamp's.  
  
  
  
Deep Inside of You  
  
By Miyamoto Yui  
  
  
  
Chapter 14 – Memory in the rain.  
  
* click *  
  
I closed the door behind me softly.  
  
But as always, when something is done so silently, it sends a loud echo whether or not it is expected.  
  
* click, clack * * click, clack… *  
  
Whenever I close Kamui's door, I close my eyes. It's like a constant reminder. I don't know why it has to be his door.  
  
Does it hold any significance at all that it has to be his? Must be. Everything in this life does, doesn't it?  
  
I wouldn't be surprised anymore.  
  
* click, clack *  
  
I don't want to think about it. The memory, as small as it is, still stands so fresh in my mind.  
  
* click, clack click, clack *  
  
My mother's tears.  
  
Falling to the ground.  
  
Quietly, but echoing...  
  
*tap, tap, tap *  
  
Like the rain outside now…so loudly.  
  
*click clack click clack *  
  
They're taking me away forever. These monks with their slippers going click clack click clack…  
  
*click…cling, cling… *  
  
Ojou-san.  
  
This chaotic quietness also reminds me of you and your sword.  
  
* pound, pound… *  
  
I keep on pounding on a wall. How will I even touch that kind of high security as you hold your sword invisibly and defensively against me?  
  
  
  
I shook my head and hit my forehead. Then, I rubbed my eyes. "You really are sleepy, aren't you, Sorata?"  
  
I looked around and took a deep breath as I sighed slowly. "I'll get scolded for not keeping watch."  
  
Then, I laughed. "Naw, that could be just her way of affection?"  
  
Either way, it could be a good plan. At least she'd talk to me?  
  
As I went down the empty hall, I am comforted by the silence and peace that surrounds me for the moment. Even if there's rain, I don't mind anymore.  
  
But after a few paces, I immediately stopped. There She was in front of me as she stood there like a beautiful statue looking out the windowpane.  
  
I swear, I didn't want to move from where I was. It was so rare to look at her this way. I gulped.  
  
Sorata, you could be such a dork sometimes.  
  
Wait…is she frowning?  
  
You can't just stand there, you idiot-  
  
"What is so amusing?" She said as she turned her face towards my direction. Wearing the same serious expression on her face, I instantly gave her my smile.  
  
The usual reaction.  
  
"I was just passing by."  
  
"Then pass," she matter-of-factly says.  
  
"You don't stand in front of windows, Ojou-san," I seriously say as I stand in my place looking at her still. "Not unless you're watching someone."  
  
"…" She becomes silent.  
  
"I always wonder what you think about when you look at rain, Ojou-san." I began to put my hands in my pockets and smiled wistfully. "Everyone has a memory in the rain. If I ever found someone who didn't, that in itself would be kind of sad."  
  
"…"  
  
"It doesn't have to be something big, you know."  
  
I stop for a bit, but then think that this is just a natural occurrence in the world. For her not to talk has become something endearing in a way just as she has gotten used to me talking in a one-way conversation.  
  
But I don't think she has to tell me anything. I instinctively understand, as she does with me.  
  
"I think I told you about mine right?" I then stepped a bit closer and leaned on the wall as I put my hands in back of my head like a little kid. "Grandpa and all the monks took me away in the rain. And I remember my mother cried after me calling my name over and over. I wasn't allowed to look back, but I did."  
  
Her eyes slightly lower.  
  
"That was the day I found out about my destiny…" I sighed as I smiled and looked at her. "You know the rest."  
  
She kept her silent opinions to herself.  
  
I nudge her lightly on the arm with my elbow. "Now that you know about me, care to tell me a little about yourself?"  
  
I stood there hopeful not really expecting anything.  
  
It was then that I could feel the tension and I didn't want to make her uncomfortable. I pushed myself off the wall with my foot and took out my hands from my pockets. Then, I patted her head as I sincerely said, "You probably have your reasons not to tell me. I'll always understand that."  
  
Inside, I was a little disappointed. I wanted to know everything about this woman…  
  
This woman I had grown to love.  
  
The one I myself had dubbed most beautiful in the world.  
  
But also the most silent of them all.  
  
You can't win them all, can you, Sorata?  
  
As I was letting go of my hand from the top of her soft hair, in that split second, she answered in a whisper, "I…I can't."  
  
I stood in back of her and turned my head though her back was still facing me. With all my heart, I replied calmly, "Why?"  
  
"I…I wanted to forget it."  
  
"Forget what?"  
  
"For a time, I thought I would purposely forget the memory."  
  
Then, I heard her…  
  
Like an echo that silently passes painfully…  
  
I heard her sniff as she tried to quickly throw away the tear that had come down her face with the back of her hand.  
  
I shook my head and closed my eyes. "Stop…stop crying."  
  
It was then that I wrapped my arms around her shoulders. Whispering to her ear softly and with guilt, I say, ""Don't tell me if you're not ready. Please…please don't cry."  
  
"Do anything, but please don't cry."  
  
I don't want to make you cry too. I can't bear it.  
  
Shout at me. Hit me. Anything but this.  
  
"You tell me to tell you my memory. How can I tell you my memory of the rain without crying?"  
  
I closed my eyes even more as I wrapped my arms around her tighter.  
  
"Who has ever had a happy memory in the rain? Tell me this."  
  
My eyes open in shock.  
  
Who was I lying to? Who were you lying to, Sorata? How can you not cry when you think of your mother and the rain?  
  
How could you make her cry? You idiot…  
  
"Because I love you. That's why." I answer helplessly as I close my eyes again while hugging her tighter than before.  
  
Kissing the back of her head carefully, I try to comfort her.  
  
"Please forget it. Please forget what I said," I plead. "I won't ever ask again. Please stop crying…"  
  
  
  
I know my pleas or comforts won't do anything to ease anything. Just like years ago…  
  
When I realized what destiny meant…  
  
You can't stop what's coming.  
  
No matter how painful it is.  
  
But I'll try to. As much as I can, Ojou-san.  
  
For you…  
  
If…if only you would tell me how…  
  
  
  
On the other side of the window, the clouds tears run down the glass surface…  
  
Tap…tap…tap…  
  
  
  
Another memory in the rain has been etched into my heart.  
  
I don't care if it's like this...  
  
Even if it's like this.  
  
I want to hold on a little longer.  
  
I look up to the ceiling above us.  
  
This is my prayer. I've never asked for anything and I'm not bitter about what has happened in my life.  
  
But I beg you,  
  
Whoever is listening,  
  
Just a little longer…  
  
Please...  
  
  
  
--  
  
Author's note: * sniff, sniff, blows nose * I haven't cried this much since 'When You blink' or the seventh chapter of 'Random Thoughts'.  
  
I hope this was to your liking Setsuna-san because this chapter was especially for you. * winks * I tried really hard! * smiles *  
  
* laughs * Well, I occasionally use a song to write with to get the mood. For Sorata, I used, "Damn, I wish I was your lover" by ? Well, to me, it fits. 


	15. You make me stronger everyday

Disclaimer: X isn't mine. It's Clamp's.  
  
Deep Inside of You By Miyamoto Yui  
  
Chapter 15 - You make me stronger everyday.  
  
"Onegai." I heard him say.  
  
I don't think he realizes that he just said that.  
  
I then looked up to his face to find him staring aimlessly at the ceiling. "Why are you looking at the ceiling?"  
  
He shook his head. "Nothing. Nothing at all."  
  
Ache. A little electric shock ran through my heart. He was hiding something from me and didn't want me to know.  
  
He finally let go as we touched forehead to forehead. "That's good. Please don't cry."  
  
I sighed as I looked down to the floor. Then, I turned back to look out the window.  
  
Strangely, I felt the urge to plaster my hands on the glass windowpane. You're holding me back.  
  
It was only a window holding me back from jumping. That's how it always was. I used to be scared of it.  
  
He was about to leave again when I started to say, "I used to be scared of looking at my reflection."  
  
Sorata stopped walking as he stood there again behind me. I could feel his eyes watching me carefully.  
  
"Why?" he asked dumbfounded. "You don't seem the type, Ojou-san."  
  
"When I was little, I used to watch all the children outside playing. I couldn't go out because my mother was paranoid that I would be taken away. She loved me so much that I couldn't even take a step out of my house without her permission." I sighed as I pressed my hands on the window more. "I looked out the window as a way of finding life."  
  
I glanced at him for a moment as he looked away from me.  
  
"It rained when my mother died. It seemed that anything that was important to me, rain was sure to follow." I laughed a bit. "Isn't it funny?"  
  
My lip trembled.  
  
"I wandered for months and even ate trash, Sorata-san. I was used to being poor, but.it just wasn't the same. There was no kindness anymore from my mother to justify anything. None at all." My hands wanted to grab onto the glass as my face filled itself with tears. Pouring my heart out, I found myself quivering without knowing it. "I thought, 'What is the point to this?'"  
  
I turned to look at him in the eye with my hands still on the glass. My eyes were filled with tears about to fall and my lip quivering.  
  
Such weakness. I can't believe I'm so weak sometimes.  
  
"Ms. Kaede found me when it was about to rain. I was covered in dirt, but I refused to cry and acknowledge defeat. I made a promise to my mother, but even that was wavering. I didn't want to eat anymore." I blinked and two tears fell slowly to the ground as if in slow motion. "This is the memory in the rain that I most remember, Sorata-san. That was a point in my life I wanted to erase. When Ms. Kaede told me that she would be sad if I died, I ate again. Why? Someone cared for me. That gave me enough strength to go on."  
  
I smiled wistfully. "Then, there was you. You said I was beautiful. You said I was 'the one you had chosen'." I took a deep breath as my heart felt light and heavy at the same time. "And I was shocked inside. More shocked than I showed. I was thinking, 'This stranger would give their life for me. I don't understand him. He's strange and loud.'"  
  
Sorata laughed as he put his hand in back of his head in embarrassment. I could see the patches of pink on his cheeks.  
  
That. .is kind of adorable.  
  
"And all through the time I spent with you. I now understand you." I let go of the glass and turned around completely to face him. "This will always be a memory for me."  
  
I always feel comfortable in front of you Sorata. I feel like someone will always take care of me whenever I'm around you.  
  
Deep inside of myself, I had always thought what was the point to my life if there was no way I could live it. I am entangled by responsibilities to the shrine, my heart is troubled, and I always think about what is the point to life. Over and over these things will never leave me. Yet, these worries and strengths become stronger everyday.  
  
Outside, I refuse to show my weaknesses. I don't want anyone to take advantage of me. Inside, I am always thinking about becoming stronger.  
  
Then, there's you. You will do anything to keep me happy even if you don't know what to do with yourself.  
  
I found that so sweet, but I could never tell you. I could never say the countless times that your touch is warm and makes me feel wanted.  
  
"You're stupid," I seriously said as I blinked at him.  
  
This was the only way I can show you affection.  
  
"What?" He put his head forward as he held a confused expression on his face. "Why?"  
  
"You don't have to tell me you love me. I already know." I held his left cheek with my right hand as I leaned forward with my eyes closed to kiss him on the cheek.  
  
When I let go of his cheek, I whispered, "You say that I give you a reason to live and protect. But didn't you know, Sorata-san? You make me stronger everyday."  
  
He looked at me in shock as I walked down the hall. Then, he smiled.  
  
I know I can't say it aloud to you. But I know you'll always understand me.  
  
Another memory in the rain. But you gave me a happy one, Sorata.  
  
A smile slightly found itself on my lips.  
  
-- Author's note: We're slowly coming along. Sorry it took a long time to update. Wow, didn't do this for a month, but I was really really having trouble with the internet connection. In addition to that, I started 'you drive me crazy'. Why? After all these fanfics, I do something crazy like that: I needed a breather. I needed something happy. I needed something waffy. That and the fact that I must get the feel for Arashi. It's hard to characterize her and so I was very fascinated and wanted to take a while since Sorata and Arashi's relationship is different from the other people I wrote about so far. We as readers know the stories about Sora being taken away and Arashi going to the Ise Shrine. So, I wanted them to make a memory together.They have 'no future' and so this is it for them. ;_; * sniff, sniff * Then again, I made Arashi's a little bit lighter to be opposite from Sorata's 'sad' chapter. This one's also dedicated to you, Setsuna-san. 


	16. Yume wa monogatari no youni…

Disclaimer: X belongs to Clamp. I write fanfics in appreciate for the dedication of the artists and write this in appreciation of their continuing effort to provide thought-provoking plots and original characters.  
  
Deep Inside of You  
By Miyamoto Yui  
  
  
Certain lips hinted of a slight smile though I could see where they had gone through to get where they should have. I could do nothing to preserve the life of that smile giver.   
  
Though she lives forever…  
She is not of this world anymore. And it might as well be better this way.  
But who am I to say these types of things? I do not rule people's lives as the God or the one named Kamui.  
I am only a dreamgazer. A dreamgazer freely goes through dreams and visions, but is kept inside their little bubble.  
  
They can only go so far.  
They can only do so much with their painted landscape.  
  
  
Chapter 16 - Yume wa monogatari no youni… (A dream is like a story…)  
  
  
"Dreams are like stories, Hokuto," I said as I sat at the cliff while she squatted next to me. Her arm was over her knees as we sat off the imaginary beach below us. "But stories are like dreams."  
"Why do you say that?" she glanced at me and then threw a rock while watching it drop into a little dot into the crashing ocean. "Dreams are dreams, Kakyou."  
"I mean that they only last for so long. You don't know if they really happened unless you remember what you wanted to recollect."  
She turned her face towards me and leaned her right hand on her cheek. "But that's like history. You can't recall everything, but humans record what they need to and want to. It isn't necessarily what they see, you know. Everyone sees things differently."  
I shook my head and smiled at her. "You think so clearly. Is that because you don't have to dream for other people?"  
She knocked her forehead on my own and answered, "I dream for myself. No one ever forces you to be something if you really don't want to do it."  
"Are you sure?"  
She got up. "That's what I believe."  
Then, her face became a little wistful as she looked straight in front of her at the horizon line. "That's what I'm trying to tell Subaru. But he won't listen to me." She turned her head towards me with her hands folded behind her. "You and my brother are alike in that respect."  
"Ah…" I nodded.  
  
I hopelessly enjoyed these quiet times with Hokuto. She always cleared my head whenever I thought too much and sometimes, it made me laugh by her seriousness, yet playful attitude towards everything.  
  
"You are always so positive," I commented as I took a pebble into my fingers. I looked at it for a bit. It was so smooth and yet so rough at the same time. How things that are paradoxical exist I will never truly understand in this world.  
  
Life and not living it in my case, for example.  
  
"I have to be." She then sat by me again. "If I don't, people I care for will frown."  
She shook her head as her gaze became a bit distant. I didn't know if she was talking to herself or me as she continued, "I promised it ever since the day that my brother came back to me with tears in his eyes because of his curse. If I won't do it, no one else will do it. Besides, if you want something done right, then you do it yourself, ne?"  
"Yes, that's the way to go," I agreed as I nodded my head.  
  
But then, I looked at the blue sky. Was this how a real beach was? I only learned this from books and what people told me.  
  
I never really experienced them before.  
Only when Fuuma took me from my bed did I even feel what the true city air was. Though I hated his method about going about things, I was a bit grateful for it.  
  
"Do you want me to tell you your fortune, Hokuto?" I looked at her as she glanced back at me. But she shook her head at me. "Thank you, but I'm not scared like other people are of the future. That's what I learned when you come from an omniyouji family. If you live, you live. If you die, you die."  
She took a palm-sized rock into her fist and threw it with all her might. "The people that are afraid are the ones that regret stuff." Hokuto smiled at me. "I haven't regretted anything in my life. I only wish I could have been with Subaru more."  
My eyes had opened at that moment in shock. She had already known all along that she was going to die.   
Yet, she was not scared at all.   
  
What a strong person you are, Hokuto.  
That's why I love you so much.  
  
She wrapped her arms around me and whispered, "You must be strong too, Kakyou. I believe in you."  
Everyone who had ever confronted or met with me always thanked me like I was something special. They treated me that way only because of my ability to help them. They were only trying to save themselves in the end.   
  
But she…  
She was the pillar of my strength. Hokuto believed in me as a human from the bottom of my detached and scarred heart.  
  
Hugging me closer and tighter, she whispered, "Why are humans so lonely?"  
The smile I had learned to love began to crumble as she shook in front of me. "I can never show these types of emotions to anyone. 'Hokuto-chan always smiles so much.'they always tell me. Maybe…maybe I'm kind of jealous that my brother got most of everyone's attention." She sobbed as she quivered in my arms. "Only he loves me, though."  
I shook my head. "No, I can assure you that there is someone who loves you even more than that."  
"Thank you…you are such a good friend, Kakyou." She answered. "I love you too."  
  
As a companion. As a friend.  
That's all she thought what _I_ thought of her.  
  
But if you were to really read my thoughts, you'd see, you were the only one in that category that was ever marked 'happy'.   
"Happy dreams"…visions that came and went so quickly.  
  
"You have to wake up soon, Hokuto," I said with a smile though it killed me inside. I patted her back softly. "If you don't go…"  
"What will you do, Kakyou?" She wiped her tears as she looked into my eyes.  
"I might keep you here forever. But your brother would hate me for it." I laughed at the truth.  
  
I would keep you here forever if it meant that you could be 'alive'. But when your destiny has been decided by the stars, you cannot choose like the ordinary people do.  
  
They are the truly free ones in this world.  
  
But, I became a prisoner of my own heart.  
  
"You would keep me here." She smiled as she held my cheek with her hand. "Am I just a dream to you, Kakyou?"  
"A very good one if I may comment," I replied.  
"You…" she said as she came closer to my face.   
"…would…" She held both of my cheeks.  
"…keep me…" Hokuto then kissed me on the lips gently.  
  
It was then that I knew what strawberries tasted like…  
  
As she slowly opened her eyes as I kept mine open with much shock upon them, I finally understood the magic that Hokuto-chan had.   
If you had been the one to inherit the Sumeragi household, no power would stand against you, Hokuto. I hope you know that.  
  
She went into the threshold, but before she did so, she said, "I wouldn't mind being kept for a while, Kakyou."  
  
And I stared at that abyss of a doorway for a long time. It would be one of the last few times I ever saw her or felt her warmth beside me.  
  
Never again…  
  
But you didn't know, Hokuto. You never asked my age, didn't you?   
I didn't want to tell you. You know why? You really want to know why?  
  
I've been watching you all along.  
I've been watching you as long and as carefully as the Sakurazukamori stalking his beloved prey which happens to be your brother.  
  
Whenever you felt lonely, I tried to give you a happy dream. I came in different forms to you so that you would never feel sadness as long as I could give it to you.  
You didn't know the nights I stayed awake with my consciousness fading to its last extent just to be able to catch a glimpse of you.  
  
Hinoto would get so mad at me but I didn't listen to her when she warned me of my reckless actions.  
  
I wasn't God, I know that. But I damn well tried to be.  
  
Only for you.  
  
And the smile I had tried to keep so clear inside of me, this little happiness I had tried to preserve as all humans do, it is starting to fade away.  
  
But, no matter how well you try to hold onto something, it will eventually fade from you. There are some things that you will want to erase.  
  
That's why if I want to live in my dreams, I damn will. There is nothing else for me to do now.  
  
I then smiled a sorrowful grin as I began to sing to myself a song that I found in her dream once. It was by a singer called Hyde and it was called 'Shallow Sleep':  
  
"I just saw you   
Beyond the course of time   
A room that we once shared   
But my memory's a haze   
Forgetting what was said   
I gently held out my hand   
And in that perfect moment   
You disappeared –  
I lost you over again   
In a shallow sleep   
I dreamt I was seeing you   
Just how I remembered   
Brimming with tenderness   
And somewhere in the calm   
A feeling that nothing had ever changed   
Your presence close beside me   
Till I wake   
I just saw you   
A moment far too brief   
Before the daylight came   
But my heart is beating fast   
Perhaps we'll meet again   
In a shallow sleep   
I dreamt I was seeing you   
Just how I remembered   
Brimming with tenderness   
And somewhere in the calm   
A feeling that nothing had ever changed   
Your presence close beside me till I wake   
I see you   
Until I wake from shallow sleep   
  
An artist without a brush   
Can't paint upon the canvas   
Without you here -- there is no color   
A colorless landscape   
  
In a shallow sleep   
I dreamt I was seeing you   
Just how I remembered   
Brimming with tenderness   
And somewhere in the calm   
A feeling that nothing had ever changed   
Your presence close beside me   
Till I wake   
I see you –   
Shallow sleep "  
  
  
So, I still think that dreams are like stories, as I had said to you. And stories are like dreams.  
You only choose what you want to remember.  
  
And I'm losing my life ever so slowly without you.  
  
There is no story left for me to tell.  
  
My hand twitched as I slept on the bed. Whispering with barely any strength, I say,  
"One that I want to talk about, I mean…"  
  
Drifting into unconsciousness, my lips curved up a bit with a bittersweet strawberry taste as I sang my favorite lines again:  
  
"An artist without a brush   
Can't paint upon the canvas   
Without you here -- there is no colour   
A colourless landscape"  
  
  
--  
Author's note: I love Kakyou… * sighs * I tried to make him both gentle, yet not overly sad.  
It took me a while to make this chapter after a disheartening review. Though I understand everyone has their own opinions, one thing I will not tolerate is an attitude that assumes what _I_ have to say. That's all I have to say about it.  
I know I'm not one of the greatest writers out there, nor am I that popular among the anime world, but one thing you can never tell me is that I don't have passion. Though I write quite weirdly, I realize now that people don't read my stories for the numerous proofreads I don't fix or other. It's for the emotion. I used to wonder why I would win poem contests when I thought my format was so simple, but now I'm beginning to understand.  
I like Subaru and Seishirou because of their characters and their stories. (Explaining why would require me to tell my what I write in my journal and my life story, though.) But that doesn't mean I don't like the other pairings in the X series. And 'false angst'? Sorry, but I wanted to make Karen have someone that she could actually touch. I love Aoki, in fact I loved him since the first time I saw that business guy with his polite ways as well as Karen. But he was already promised to another person.  
Let me say, 'false angst' that is spoken of because of Karen being 'abused, Catholic, etc.' I can say that yes, I did make another story and didn't mention Aoki at all. Sorry. But angst is something I can't create without experience. Try to be an esper, catholic, reincarnated, discriminated, going through anxiety attacks…' and that's not _even_ the tip of the iceburg. If you can imagine that, you can see why I saw myself through Karen.  
But on the upside, I have to say, thanks to you too Neko Mimi. You know why? I realized that just have to try harder.  
So, thank you so much for reading this maybe meaningless author's note and my random rants.   
I just want to say thank you very very much for those who have faithfully read this, especially you Dafna-chan. I wouldn't have gotten into a writer's block for every fanfic if it weren't for your moral support. So, I'll tell you now that this whole fic, beginning, middle, end…all of it's dedicated to you. 


	17. Maybe if you looked back at me

Disclaimer: X is by Clamp. I just do this in appreciation of them… The song is by Hyde from 'Shallow Sleep'.  
  
Deep Inside of You  
By Miyamoto Yui  
  
  
Chapter 17 – Maybe if you looked back at me…  
  
  
"Heh," I thought as I looked to the sky almost losing myself in the song as we passed a music store. It was from some famous band in Japan for quite sometime now. I actually loved that song. And so, it was not surprising for me to find myself smiling s I heard,  
  
"An artist without a brush   
Can't paint upon the canvas   
Without you here -- there is no colour   
A colourless landscape"  
  
"Yes, when someone doesn't know color, that would be horrid," I thought as I looked at her walk away from me. This was the part of Tokyo that sometimes made me feel sad. We had to end our nice walks and talks at this street.  
  
This was where our worlds differed. She went one way and I went the other.   
  
Before, I thought nothing of it. It was just an occurrence that friends always had, right? You intersect for a while, and then you must depart and go back to where you belong in the world.   
But as the days passed into months, I realized those moments were important.   
  
Maybe it was because I knew we were dying with smiles plastered to our faces to hid everything. To everyone else not involved in the end of the world, we were just ordinary people trying to live our lives to the fullest.  
Or maybe it was because I had learned a lot from her. For with all the time I spent with her, I never left without something to think about.   
  
But nonetheless, I found myself, at times, standing there longer with her so that we wouldn't have to part.  
To keep this moment as if it was locked in time.  
  
In reality, I knew I was just prolonging the end…  
  
I would even stop to look in back of me sometimes. And I would stare at her coat, dress, or whatever caught my eye at that moment, and see her clothing flow behind her. From the back, I saw the repose she wanted to give the world.   
  
But I knew more than probably all her lovers and admirers could ever grasp of her.  
  
And somehow, my hand had caught this aspect that wouldn't be shown to the world.  
  
I couldn't feel nothing less than a resolved admiration for such a woman. Sure, she laughed at the times I acted very scatterbrained, but then she was truly smiling at that moment. It wasn't the kind you would give to just anyone.   
  
No, she was much deeper than that.  
  
But she would never look back of her. I didn't blame her though. Maybe it would make her think of bad times if she did.  
  
But...if she looked back now…  
…maybe she would see me standing there looking at her.  
  
I didn't want her in a sexual way. I was only attracted to her charm and wit. I don't know how else to describe it really.  
Except, deep inside…  
  
Deep inside of myself, I knew we had made a connection that no one could even begin to understand or touch.  
We were close, yet so far away from one another.  
  
  
Her scarf flowed behind her as if saying 'bye' to me. I laughed a bit as I turned around at the irony of it all.  
  
  
As I walked home with my paper over my head, the rain began to fall again and so I found myself running home faster or less careful than I should have. But it did not matter. The faster I go home, the faster I could see my family.  
My daughter immediately jumped into my arms before I came through the door as she snuggled her baby face into my stomach as much as she could.   
"Daddy is covered in water," I laughed as I tried my best to take off my jacket and shoes..  
"Mine," she teased as she held onto me. "I didn't see Daddy all this week! I want a hug!"  
"Anything you say, Yuka-chan!" I then took her into my arms and laughed as we went into the hallway.   
  
Bowing my head at Shimako-san, we then sat down to eat. And we discussed about this week's events even though I had e-mailed them and knew exactly what was going on.   
Yuka-chan made me a picture today. All of us were holding hands and smiling in the picture. She put it on the refrigerator like a one-million dollar masterpiece. I would have to say, that's how Shimako-san and I looked at it too.  
  
She was happy and safe. This is what she felt.  
And I couldn't help but feel proud while smiling from ear to ear.  
  
Yuka-chan then pulled my sleeve and we both brushed our teeth together. She then laughed as I made weird faces at her through the mirror.  
  
Those innocent eyes had never seen my power...  
  
At that moment, as we entered her bedroom, the wind gently swayed the curtains as if calling to me. Still smiling at my little girl, she climbed onto her bed and handed me a book to read to her.   
Then, Shimako-san came in and crawled onto the bed on the other side of Yuka-chan. As I read the story, they were quiet and they both listened attentively.   
When Yuka-chan fell asleep, we both kissed her on the forehead and headed for our room. As I pushed off my slippers, my wife kissed my own forehead and slipped onto the covers. I got into bed and pulled the covers over me. It was then that Shimako-san put her arms around me and put her head on my chest. "Oyasumi."  
"Oyasumi," I said I placed my glasses on the nightstand and turned off the light.  
  
After twenty minutes of silence, my wife, knowing me as well as she did, whispered, "What's wrong?"  
"Huh?" I was startled a bit by this because I didn't expect it. I was so preoccupied with trying to sleep that I didn't pay attention to anything but the words in my head.  
"Can't get to sleep." I frowned though she couldn't see me.  
"Work has been stressing you out?" She turned her head to look up at me. It was then that our eyes adjusted to the darkness around us.  
"Kind of. The editor is asking me to get the next installment...but you know those four women are hard to manage when they have how many projects. They get things on time, but it's always by the millionth of a second before."  
She patted my chest. "Oh, it's okay. Don't worry about it. You'll get sick again if you do."  
  
I almost forgot how life was before I had a family...when I was alone. Though I was Saiki's uncle, I showed him a part of me that worked hard and was decent.  
But that was only through knowing what was dark in the first place. Exposed to so many things while I was growing up, I had learned to be true to myself and delve into what was true. I knew the difference between making a decision and choosing the 'better one'.  
Everything is gray in life, but there can't be a gray without a black and a white, right? Simplistic as that might have been, that was the only thing I knew in life. You had to be sincere and respect whomever and whatever, no matter what.  
  
When I was young, about the age of fifteen, I finally realized the extent of my powers. They weren't as tame as they were now, and that came with a lot of training. Shimako-san tries not to worry, but I know she thinks about it when I'm gone.  
I told her that if for any reason I died early, she was supposed to follow with whatever we had planned. At first she got mad at me, but then, she accepted it without question.  
I remember 'proposing' to her with a heart about to burst out of pity and sincerity...  
  
"Matte!!!!!!" I had shouted across the train track as the guards were about to come down slowly between us.  
Huffing and puffing, I placed my hands on my knees and breathed heavily.  
Shimako-san looked at me with a wistful smile almost with a twinge of hope.  
"I know I'm a good for nothing! But I promise to be better!" I shouted with all my might. "I love you! Marry me!!!"  
I was just college student who didn't know any better and worked so hard that I didn't know the difference between people and work. Work had always come first.  
But then, I met Shimako-san.  
With her gentle kindness, I had gradually regained the pieces of my hard-heart. Inside, I thought that if I was some sort of freak with a power, then I must try my hardest to be as human as possible.   
  
To blend in...  
  
Even if I'm to die early, maybe I didn't deserve happiness. For my death would cause another's pain.  
She just stood there and tilted her head and held her bag in front of her. "But you told me you will die early! What will happen to me?!"  
"I want to make you happy!" I shouted from the core of my soul and closed my eyes so hard that I didn't want to open them. I was so scared about the reality I had presented myself.  
The train passed and it felt like an eternity passed when 108 storage cases whizzed before me.   
  
I almost cried.  
Just when you think that someone would be able to break your coldness...  
  
It was then that when I looked in front of me to see what I had lost. To regret what I had thought someone like me could wish for.  
I didn't deserve that type of thing, didn't I? Just like in high school when someone had found out about my power.  
  
There she stood across the track. With tears in her eyes, she shouted, "You promise, Seiichirou?!"  
  
I nodded my head.  
  
Then, she shouted the words I would always keep with me for the rest of my life:  
"Only you can make yourself happy! I just want to be with you...  
So please believe in what I say!"  
  
I laughed as we walked towards one another because in the end, she had proposed to me.  
  
  
So...  
  
As I walked again with Karen-san today, we leaned on the back of a park bench and licked ice cream from our cones.   
  
It was that look.   
  
That look…  
I don't know if you'll understand what I'm trying to say, but there was a look she had that took down all her discretions.  
I felt like I was looking at myself years ago when her eyes looked far away from my own.  
  
My wife's voice suddenly bursted inside of my head, "You promise, Seiichirou?!"  
  
Karen-san had not regarded herself so highly as I did. And that was how I had looked at myself also.  
Through Karen, I had seen myself somewhat. Though I tried to make her see that it was otherwise, something like this doesn't magically go away. Scars that you've inflicted on yourself and others as well as the ones that others place on you can never be fully healed.  
  
They stay there waiting and ignored.  
  
I don't know how to put it. It is a twisted and complicated thing. The intricacies go beyond the human heart and mind.  
  
And so, when Karen turned again at our usual spot, I found myself grabbing her arm before logic had set in my nerves. Startled, he tilted her head and asked, "What happened?"  
I looked at her unable to say what I wanted.  
As if reading my mind, like always, she smiled as I loosened my grip. Then, she patted my cheek. "Stop worrying about me."  
  
I was the one now surprised. I didn't know I had made myself seem so.  
  
She turned around and walked on her path. But I stood there still watching her back.  
  
  
It was then, for the first time…  
She turned her head to watch me too.  
  
In depths of my feelings, like words floating on the surface of water, I tried to deny myself of what I was thinking.  
But at that moment, I let it slip. Deep inside of me, I thought,   
  
  
"It would have been you, Karen..."  
  
  
As if to answer me, her lips said, "Thank you."  
  
Then, she walked on with her apricot scarf following behind her.  
I almost wanted to catch it…  
  
Even if it was wrong of me to do so.  
  
If she had looked back, she would have known that I felt like I was waiting for something. I didn't know what, but I knew that if she looked back one of these days, she would realize it was me.  
  
  
That I was...  
  
  
...  
  
  
to be continued.  
--  
Author's note: I didn't know what to do with him. But I didn't want a married man falling for Karen. But I think Seiichirou and Karen make a cute couple too...does this make any sense to you? I'm sorry if I'm confusing.  
I've always like Aoki though. And if anyone really knew me, they'd see I'd love him if there were a real life version of him because he's a clean cut, honest, dorky, business man. And so, that's why it took me so many chapters to finally bring this up. Actually, he was supposed to be after 3 people, but I felt it was more appropriate here. Why? Well, the next set of characters will be a challenge to me because I don't know how they think.   
Also, I wanted this to be a reverse to Karen's chapter (in which this chapter was made many months ago-around march to tell the truth. ^^;;;) in which Aoki is thinking about Karen. You never really see that in the manga. It's always Karen thinking about Aoki and his actions, and even her character file! 


	18. Tsubaki ni naranai

Disclaimer: X is by Clamp and the lyrics used were from 'Kiss on my list' by Hall and Oates as well as 'You're so vain' by Carly Simon.  
  
  
Deep Inside Of You  
By Miyamoto Yui  
  
  
  
"…"  
  
There was nothing he could say as the silence around him comforted his whole being.  
  
As he stood in the middle of his bedroom, there was no sincere reaction on his part.  
  
But whatever he held in his hands, it just gave him an automatic response. He looked at it with a smile that seemed never-ending. And all he could do was stare at the hated, yet loved thing within his hands.  
Almost on instinct, he both wanted to embrace it, and yet he had wanted to burn it.  
  
As the moonlight shone in his room, he stared out of the glass window with the wooden floor creaking under his feet. Pacing from one side to the other slowly, he finally stopped to stare at the window.  
Then, he looked at what he held in his hands.  
  
"It's still the same as it was then…" He began to laugh to himself in frustration and pleasure. Shaking his head from side to side both in truth and in between lies, he finished, "I only smile when I lie."  
  
Then, he bent his head as he embraced the kimono until everything came back to him vividly as best as it could ever have been revived.   
  
It was the sweetest scent he had ever known:  
  
Sakura mixed with blood.  
  
  
Chapter 18 – Tsubaki ni naranai… (I cannot become the camellia…)  
  
  
"Tadaima," the boy had greeted as soon as he closed the door behind him. But, he tried his best to be suave and hide the package behind him. So, he immediately hid it behind the couch as his mother turned to smile at him.  
  
With her folded hands covered with blood, she nodded her head peacefully as she greeted back, "Okaeri. Seishirou-san."  
  
He went towards her as her hands dripped softly onto the ground as if watering them with her cut flesh. Only, it was by another's blood.  
  
How quaint.  
  
He smiled back her. It was the kind of smile he had learned from her: the one that held secrets as if they were never there.  
This smile that would learn to deceive even the ones you loved with all of your heart.  
  
"Do you know what day it is today, Mother?" he asked as he walked towards this woman who had been enclosed within her own walls and crept away at night like that a vampire searching for willing victims.  
  
She smirked at him and shook her head with her eyes half-closed. Playfully, she took her bloodied index finger and touched his chin gently. "What day is today?"  
  
From behind, he pulled out a tsubaki.  
He almost wanted to laugh and so he couldn't help but comment, "You like this flower better than the sakura?"  
  
As she took the stem into her fingers and took the flower from him, she nodded as she turned around. Looking at the sakura petals falling like red raindrops, she took a sniff of the camellia tenderly. Like a teenager, she giggled childishly.   
"I like it because it is truly red. The sakura can never be red no matter how much you stain them."  
  
She turned around as her eyes faced the ground. "No matter what you do, you can't become something you're not."  
  
Her eyes squinted a bit as he focused on her red lips. "No matter what I do, these sakura will never become as wonderful as this flower."  
  
Setsuka then smiled as she looked at Seishirou and tilted her head. "People praise the sakura too much."  
  
"But you _are_ the sakura," Seishirou answered while holding his gaze at his mother.  
  
"So I am…" She then laughed as she turned around in her kimono. "So, I must hate myself, don't I Seishirou-san?"  
  
Her laughter entangled itself in the wind as it passed by suddenly. Setsuka's dark velvet hair waved in the wind as Seishirou watched her with no intention of moving from his place. He had always loved beautiful things anyway.  
  
He thought his mother was truly beautiful.  
One of the most beautiful things he had ever seen in his life…  
  
"Today is Mother's Day," he finally said.  
  
She nodded her head. "That's nice."  
  
But did Seishirou really know what a mother was? He never really bothered himself with these minor details. He didn't like troubling himself with things such as this.  
They were so trivial…  
  
…so useless.  
  
"And I have a present for you," he announced as he watched his mother.  
  
She nodded her head as she turned around. "Okay, I'll wait until you get it."  
  
He walked slowly to the couch and got the white package. In between his hands, he felt like his hands were bleeding.  
It somehow bothered him, but he kept that certain smile on his face.  
  
It was the most natural reaction he could ever give. That damn smile was his trademark.  
  
He had forgotten its sincerity…  
  
"Kore." He tapped her shoulder as she turned around to receive the package. The blood splattered itself onto the whiteness of the package like paint on a canvas when it was carelessly thrown onto it.  
Her eyes closed as she smiled excitedly at him, though she was trying to be calm about the whole thing.  
  
She always enjoyed his presents. He always seemed to know what to give her without even saying anything.  
  
Through the tissue, she pulled the kimono in between her fingertips and stroked it tenderly. Embracing the kimono, she shook her head. "Thank you."  
  
"I didn't know if you would like it," he said as he looked away with an embarrassed expression. "And I tried my best to remember your measurements, so I don't know if it fits."  
  
Setsuka held it out as a soft breeze blew. Proudly, she held it out to him and eyed the piece carefully. "Yes, it will fit, Seishirou-san."  
  
It was an expression he had never seen her give before. He blinked his eyes to make sure it was true.  
Could this unfeeling woman who never thought twice about killing her prey possibly be happy? He had never seen her with a smile that wide and her eyes shining as they had been at that single moment.  
  
It made him think.  
  
At that single moment, he wondered about the woman he had always called 'Mother'.  
  
Without discretion, she took off the kimono she was wearing. And he finally was able to see his mother's naked body in the daylight. She was an angel.  
But the way her soul enraptured everyone with a blink of her eye, she was the devil he dare not anger.  
She immediately wrapped herself in the kimono he had given her and he continued to stare at her without flinching or blinking. She tied her obi around her small waist and smiled at him while nodding her head.  
  
"How could this child ever be my mother," he thought at that moment.  
  
And from then on, she kept that kimono in good condition. And being possessive as she always was over Seishirou, she never wanted to change into another kimono. She washed it lovingly in her hands and refused to even touch the other ones she had.  
  
Why? It had Seishirou's scent.   
  
He had hugged it before he wrapped it and brought it home.  
  
Deep inside of her, she wanted to be selfish.  
She wanted to be the one her son thought of even if she died. But she knew that could never be.  
"I can never become the camellia…" her soft voice trailed off when she thought he couldn't hear her.  
  
  
But nothing could have ever prepared him for the beauty that had awaited him. As he slashed his hand through her chest a year later, she held his cheek.   
  
"The one you love the best isn't me…" she softly said.  
  
He shook his head to protest against her words and told her so.  
  
"I had thought that once," she said as she smiled at him. "Until I met you…"  
  
He kissed his mother as he wrapped his arms around her lovingly. Seishirou looked around himself and thought about the scene as if it were a painting. The hair scattered about with her blood brushing itself in strokes upon the snow…  
  
  
--  
  
At that moment, the man under the moon's blaming gaze upon him, smiled as he held the bloodstained kimono in front of him.  
A note fell out of some pocket and he picked it up while draping the kimono over his left arm.  
  
With teardrops mixed with blood spots, the note read elegantly,   
  
"I am the Sakura. I can never become the camellia for you, Seishirou-san."  
  
He shook his head as he smiled to himself. "That's right."  
  
The man purposely dropped the note as he took the kimono in both of his hands and held it out before him as his mother did years ago.  
  
He remembered a verse to a song that strangely reminded him of her possessiveness over him and how she made sure he belonged to her:  
  
"…when you said that we made such a pretty pair  
And that you would never leave.  
But you gave away the things you loved,  
And one of them was me…"  
  
  
Then…  
  
He dropped the kimono gracefully to the ground.  
  
  
  
--  
Author's note: This was super hard to make. @_@ Because I don't have my cd file of Seishirou, I couldn't even refer to the creepy voice of his mother.   
I tried to listen to music that would fit her. But Seishirou's mother is a very unique character that I get freaked out whenever I just think of her. If you heard her voice, you'd understand what I mean.  
But I wanted her to be very possessive, yet arrogant at the same time. She was silent, yet scary at the same time with her femininity.  
  
Sorry about all the songs in the fics, but I really like music. I'll try to be better about it in the other fanfics. 


	19. One moment in time

Disclaimer: X belongs to Clamp.  
  
Deep Inside of You  
By Miyamoto Yui  
  
  
The envelope dropped as gracefully as a kimono falls off the shoulders of a geisha. But to his shaking hands, he didn't even want to open it as if he were scared of a bomb exploding.  
Yes, he was sure another secret would be revealed. Just as his aunt had done with the video, he had eyed that envelope in front of him like a snake that would suddenly strike. He was afraid of its venom sucking the life out of him.  
  
After all, there was nothing left, right?  
  
Subaru had left him when he finally had the courage to embrace him. No matter how much he tried to act like he could move on, his heart would cringe inside to tell him the truth he wished to avoid. How could he possibly want to be slapped again in the face?  
  
Everything was just a tornado swirling towards a center that would eventually eat him alive…  
  
What good could possibly come from a note such as this?  
  
In the middle of this moonlit night, he finally picked up the letter his aunt had beautifully written herself with a brush:  
  
"To Kamui."  
  
He had been wrong as he tore it open. Tears filled his eyes as he realized it wasn't his aunt who had given him what was inside.  
  
It was his own mother's writing.  
  
  
Chapter 19 – One moment in time.  
  
  
"Hello Tokiko,  
  
You must be so upset with me for not writing for so long. I don't blame you, though. Someone who picks up their stuff, tells their little sister goodbye to go towards their destiny, and leaves just like that isn't the best role model.  
So, I know somewhere deep inside your heart, you are frustrated with me. How can I not? You're my closest of kin. I love you as if we had been twins just separated by years.  
And now, I even separate us by distance.   
But whatever the case, I hope you don't think too badly of me. You will understand when you see him, Tokiko! I gave birth to our baby just a week ago. Oh, you should see him!  
I wish you could. He has the most beautiful eyes. I don't think I've ever seen eyes as beautiful eyes as his. Well, maybe I have. But it rivaled that of the green pair I almost bumped into the other day. I'm getting off topic, but yes, I know in some distant corner, they feel his presence.  
They know he has arrived.  
  
I know it. I have seen some of them though I quickly passed by so that they wouldn't recognize me.  
  
But you know what was my dilemma when I was tired after giving birth? I didn't know what to name him.  
Behind my tired smile, I was so excited. But I calmly replied 'Shirou Kamui.' The nurses thought it was a bit strange and looked at me funny. I didn't care though.  
I held him in my arms all the same.  
  
He was my baby. Mine, and mine alone.  
  
I know he will go through many hardships, so I almost regret bringing him into the world full of tears. And it will be filled with more of his own.  
The baby sleeping on my bed like an angel is the Kamui, Tokiko. He will be the one who chooses the fate of the Earth.  
  
I'm laughing because I'm happy and crying because I'm sad at the same time. I keep on looking at him and think, "This is the child that chooses Earth's future? He can't even hold his own bottle."  
He loves to sleep though. And when he cries, even though the neighbors sometimes get mad at me, I encourage him to.   
  
It tells me he is alive.  
  
And that is what is most important, right? To be alive.  
It sounds so out of place for those of us knowing when we are going to die, how, and why. But, all we can do is live for the 'future' that has been given to us.  
  
Kamui…  
He will be so mad, frustrated, lonely, sad, and heartbroken when I leave him. And he will become even more upset with me for leaving puzzles for him to fix along the path of his life.   
Except…  
  
  
I want him to know that no matter what happens, there _is_ happiness in life.  
You may not have it for a long time. You may never keep it as much as you would want it to last. But it does exist.  
  
Even if I leave him with all the tears and burdens he must carry, tell him again that I love him, Tokiko. Tell him that when Saya and I resigned ourselves to what we must do…  
  
Even you, Tokiko…  
  
That even though I tried so hard to look strong in front of everyone around me with my calm face, I hated it all. I thought it was unfair that I should have to be some sacrificial doll for this family line.  
  
I hated our name for a time. Deep inside of myself, I had hated it all.   
  
But I swallowed all my tears all the same.  
I hated smiling knowing when I would die. I was upset when I left you. I got frustrated when the man I loved left me because of this word called 'Fate'.  
  
Destiny? It was a word I never wanted to utter without feeling so much anger inside. And yet, I nodded to it because I had no real choice.  
  
But Kamui…  
I would do it all over again for you.  
  
I knew it the first time I held you in my arms and you cried your heart out as if you knew your own destiny already.  
  
  
There is one moment in everyone's life. You are mine.  
Even if it was a short while.  
  
  
  
Please tell him Tokiko. Even if he thinks that life is unfair, tell him I know what he is going through.   
Tell him I love him with all my heart…  
  
I would never leave you or Kamui, Tokiko. I'll always be with you.  
  
  
I'm sorry this is short, but I have many matters to attend to, but always remember, you are in my heart. I think of you often, my dear little sister.  
  
Please take good care of yourself and I love you.  
  
And thank you in advance for telling Kamui.  
  
  
With love and sincerity,  
Your sister Tohru  
  
P.S. Here's a picture of my baby Kamui. Your nephew has a beautiful smile, doesn't he?"  
  
  
It was then that Kamui stared at the letter in disbelief as he took the picture out of the envelope.  
There he saw himself in his mother's lap. His left profile faced the camera as his big red eyes looked up to his mother looking down at him as he smiled at her.  
  
On the back, his mother had proudly written, "_My_ baby Kamui with the beautiful eyes."   
  
  
  
--  
Author's note: No matter what I do to this fic, I always learn more about life. And I always seem to cry along whenever I type these chapters.  
I'm just happy that I'm almost finishing this fic, but I've liked making this fic. It was one of the most fulfilling so far. Except, damn! What was I thinking when I told myself I'd do EVERY character? Or at least, most of them. 


	20. A mermaid's hopeful namida

Disclaimer: Yui doesn't own X. X is created by the awesome Clamp.  
  
Deep Inside of You  
By miyamoto yui  
  
  
Beautiful eyes…  
They seemed so familiar to me…  
  
I found myself floating in the place where I had drowned. I had almost pulled her down with me in that moment of time not too long ago…  
  
Will I be able to pull him out, I wonder…?  
  
  
Chapter 20 – A mermaid's hopeful namida.  
  
  
We who know our fate are stuck in time. And when we pass away, we are kept alive by the people whose memories we reside within.   
That's why when I looked at you, my eyes were sad and filled with the namida that I had drowned in.   
  
But, I had chosen this fate…because I had loved that woman.  
  
You were floating in the depths of your own dreams. The blue-green that seemed like ocean water surrounded us and you tried your best to look around.  
  
You looked at me and for a second, I thought you had forgotten who I was. For your eyes blinked as if they had never seen me before.  
  
"A mermaid?" you said incredulously as you looked to the surface with the light above us.  
Squinting your eyes, you shook your head in disbelief. "Mother?"  
  
I nodded slowly as my lips began to form a half-smile. There was still hope yet inside of you.  
  
"Fuuma…" I said as I reached out to him.  
  
But he slapped my arms away in disgust. He turned away from me as he said, "Whoever is showing me this illusion will pay."  
  
He shouted with all his heart, "DO YOU HEAR ME?!"  
  
But, his words floated away in bubbles.  
  
"You can only hear me here, Fuuma," I softly whispered while looking down. "And no, this isn't an illusion."  
  
I then faced him as he turned towards me. "_You_ were the one who called for me. And being your mother, I came because I heard my child's voice."  
  
"I am not Fuuma," he seriously told me. "My name is Kamui. The one called Fuuma Monou died when everyone in his life left him."  
  
I shook my head as I suddenly grabbed his shoulders. "No, they didn't die!"  
  
I placed my head on his chest as my hair floated in back of me. In frustration, my fingers crunched his uniform like sakura petals as I held onto him. "We are alive in here…"  
  
"…in your broken heart." I sobbed. "Please remember who you are!"  
  
"Your sister came to me before she died, Fuuma." I sighed sorrowfully. "I cannot lose you too!!!"  
  
"AH!" he shouted as he turned from side to side while holding his head. I then cupped my hands over his and leaned up to kiss him on the forehead. "Deep inside, you know we still live."   
  
"Please believe me…" I whispered lovingly. "Deep inside of me, I know my little boy still lives there."  
  
Shaking my head, I said, "You're not dead."  
  
  
Touching forehead to forehead, we closed our eyes as I said, "Keep your promise to me, Fuuma. That no matter what happens…you will still keep on living and protect the ones you love with your life."  
  
"If you don't, I will be disappointed in you." I then lightly pushed him away and folded my hands. "You know why?"  
  
  
"I fought for you, Fuuma."  
  
  
He eyes pierced themselves through my own as he stared at me.  
  
  
"One had told me in a dream to not have you…" I blinked at him. "But I wanted you to live."  
  
"No matter what happens, you are still my son." I then held his hands softly.   
  
  
"You are Fuuma Monou!"   
  
  
And somehow, my shout echoed around us until he closed his eyes and disappeared.  
He was going back to reality, where people can still change how they live their lives.  
  
If I kept you any more, you would never go back…  
I was almost tempted to…  
  
  
I sighed as I looked up to the surface where the false light shone above me. For no matter how much I would love to swim up there, there would be no end. There was no surface to go back to.  
  
  
That's right, you shouldn't be here.  
You are alive, my son.  
  
  
--  
Author's note: I never felt so strongly as I did when I typed, "You are Fuuma Monou!" I stopped typing.  
And then when I ended the fic, I thought, "Was this stronger than Kamui's mother's chapter?" I shook my head and said, "They are the same." Kamui's was touching while this was encouraging. I believe both mothers feel this way for their sons.  
  
Namida - tears 


	21. No identity

Disclaimer: Yui doesn't own X. Clamp does.  
  
  
Deep Inside of You  
By Miyamoto Yui  
  
"While you are alive my son, you must fulfill your duty…" one mother firmly told her son. "We have been given this obligation as one of honor by your aunt…"  
  
But for those who are shunned into a gentle darkness…  
It might as well have been called a curse.  
  
  
Chapter 21 – No identity.  
  
Souhi looked across at Hien as she nodded her head to say that the Hime had just gone to sleep. Hien nodded her head to acknowledge that she had understood what her sister had meant.  
Then, they both sat down at each side of the dreamseer's bed to meditate.  
  
It was an odd thing, really. Souhi would remember things that had come, but Hien tried to stop her. And when Hien started to even think of a future beyond the immediate, Souhi would give her a silent look.  
  
Everything in Hinoto-hime's presence was silent. You could hear a pin drop on one side of the room and it would be as if it were right in front of you. Even the twins and their footsteps were like that of a ninja's.  
From birth, they had been trained to be quiet as the wind, yet swift as they come. It was one treacherous exercise after the other. Well, that was as far as they could remember.  
  
Souhi just opened her eyes as she looked at the wooden floor before her. Quietly, she thought of the trees that used to rustle next to their bedroom when they were little. Out in some village far from Tokyo, their relatives had taken care of them.  
And their predecessors, their parents, visited once in a while. So, in truth, Souhi and Hien had only each other.  
  
But, they were opposites as much as the one named Sumeragi Subaru and his sister Hokuto. They only knew this because Hinoto-hime told them of her dreams since they were five years old.  
  
At five years of age, they had mastered what their relatives had taught them in the deep of the woods. And now, it was their own parents they must face when they were taken back to Tokyo.  
Souhi and Hien were happy to be with their parents, but what they didn't know was what was the final test.  
  
The only way to inherit the position of being Hinoto-hime's protector…  
…was through bloodshed.  
  
The twins refused to fight their parents to the death. But in the end, as with all that couldn't fight destiny, their parents died at their hands…  
  
And for someone they had never met before.  
  
"Never look back," their mother had said as she held both of their cheeks with one hand each.  
  
In the end, they ended up burying their parents under patches of forestry with no markers. The graves were only etched in each of their hearts. How they ever managed doing all this and the pain along with it, no one would ever knew.  
  
No one would ever begin to understand.  
Only Hinoto-hime could.  
  
Quickly, they rushed towards the government building where Hinoto-hime would be. When they had entered Hinoto-hime's chambers, they fell to their knees in respect.  
  
But each felt a tinge of resentment deep inside their hearts.  
  
They had been trained since birth to give their total body, mind, and soul to this paralyzed woman who could do wonders with her dreams. They had both thought she was beautiful, but each had their own opinion of beauty.  
  
Hinoto-hime bowed to them politely. "Hello" was all she could say.  
  
They both looked at each other, amazed that she had spoken directly into their minds.  
  
  
There were no room for 'sorry''s for this was a part of the family line. How could she apologize for something like that?  
  
It was because of that one person…  
that one woman who had said she would protect her a long time ago…  
  
"Hello Hinoto-hime," two tiny voices answered.  
  
"I am Souhi," one twin said as the other announced, "I am Hien."  
  
After a moment of silence…  
"You are like a beautiful doll," Hien blurted out in childish curiosity.   
"Shh! You're not supposed to say that to the princess!" Hien scolded in a loud whisper.  
  
Hinoto-hime lifted up her hand and laughed as Hien blushed.  
  
From then on, they lived with one another. It was also the day that Souhi and Hien were no longer allowed to visit outside of the building unless told to do so.  
Together, Souhi and Hien learned to take care of this princess that they had learned to love as if she were their own mother. Though Hinoto didn't know how to even take care of herself, she tried her best to understand them as much as they wanted to understand her.  
  
Hinoto-hime could never scold them. Nor could she even say a word to that boy Saiki she had also grown fond of.  
She just couldn't.  
Even when Souhi and Hien couldn't concentrate sometimes when they were supposed to meditate…  
  
Hien once went to the Hime and cried on her clothing while Souhi stood there with wide eyes trying not to get too upset.  
"I want to go back up there, Hinoto-hime," she pleaded with a soft voice. Hinoto-hime, in a dream, embraced her and shook her head sorrowfully. "I…I'm sorry…"  
  
So, from that time on, Hinoto-hime told them stories. But they were actually dreams of the future as well as the past.  
That was all she could do after all.  
  
Many people came and many years passed, but they kept a constant watch over this woman that they had learned to love. And she also loved them.  
But it was a maternal love…  
  
Also one of reverence like that of their parents that had served her…  
  
"Can you play the flute for me, Souhi?" Hinoto-hime had asked one day.  
  
Souhi played and it calmed her. And so, everytime the princess felt trouble, Souhi always played. And the quiet Hien would whisper words as if she were singing.  
  
"…No one would care to know the difference.  
We are the same, aren't we, Souhi?…"   
  
Souhi just nodded her head while still playing the flute.  
  
  
At that moment, Souhi closed her eyes as Hien glanced at her sister also unable to concentrate in their meditations. She looked up to the ceiling above them not wanting to go the surface world anymore.  
Hien had accepted that this was the life that they had to live though she knew that Souhi longed for the forests of their youth. She stared at the ceiling not wanting to cry at all for those tears weren't meant to be cried anymore.  
  
  
Then, Hien looked towards her sister's direction to find her sister playing the flute once more. And she found herself in tune trying to say words that she couldn't.  
  
Hinoto-hime opened her eyes but didn't make it known that she was listening with tears.  
She listened to Hien's continuous poetry:  
  
"…destiny is gone,  
banished from one's own heart. De-  
nial is the key…  
  
In the darkness,   
one cannot distinguish   
one thing from another   
when they are in sync…"  
  
  
"No…" Hinoto-hime had wanted to say. "I can tell you apart…"  
  
Then, she thought, "I should have said sorry…but what would I say it for?"  
  
Deep inside…  
Souhi kept on playing her flute while looking at the wooden floor thinking of yesterday…  
…as Hien looked at the ceiling wondering if they would live today.  
  
  
--  
Author's note: I tried to make this different. Since I was taking perspectives of two people, I wanted to make it like a story within a story. 


	22. Never look back

Disclaimer: X is by Clamp.  
  
Deep Inside of You  
By Miyamoto Yui  
  
  
Would I live today?  
  
The boy with the awesome red eyes looked at the ceiling bitterly knowing today was another day of survival. Well, that's all he could do really.   
Live from day to day, never knowing if the next day held a fight with death under the hand of his friend. Either way, he would be killed by a friend in body and/or spirit anyway.  
  
Was everything that hopeless?  
  
He then wondered about his mother's letter that stayed in his hands for the longest time. He didn't know whether he had want to put it away or cry on it.  
But that wasn't all that was presented to him when he gotten that letter. Days ago, another video was presented to him as a gift that was supposed to go with the letter. That's why all that time he thought it was his aunt's writing until he realized it was his own mother's.  
  
He then slowly laid himself on the bed. With a sigh, he patted the cold place where Subaru had been days ago. He wouldn't even let Sorata sit there when he came to comfort him later on.  
Still holding onto the letter, he hugged it as he stared at the ceiling. Unable to stand it, he went to a video room that he was told he could use.  
  
As the boy in his white pajamas sat in front of a vcr putting the video inside, he just sat there unable to move. His eyes just stared at the screen as if it were real.  
  
Maybe he really was losing his mind…  
He thought about how many times he had watched this…  
…and still, it made him wonder…  
  
if he would choose to live.  
  
  
Chapter 22 – Never look back.  
  
  
Hello again nephew.  
  
* The woman on the screen with a lab coat laughed *  
  
It may be silly to you, but I never really thought I would ever see you. Seeing as how time passed so quickly, I really thought that I would never be able to see this child that my sister had marveled about.  
Well, even as I make this video, I still don't know you, Kamui-kun. I hope you don't mind me calling you that.   
  
* It was then that a mass of photographs were arranged on a rug. *  
  
It's so perfect. Take a look at this, Kamui-kun. You may never see this again.   
Normally, people wouldn't want to tape things in the rain, but I will. This was one of your mother's favorite parts of the year.  
Onee-san had such an odd fascination for fall and maple trees. I don't know why, but she never liked the sakura very much.  
Then again, have you heard about the myth about people being buried under sakura trees and that's why they're pink when they're originally white?  
  
* zooms in on maple tree *  
  
Our family has had a not so good reputation with the sakura, that's why. The sakurazukamori and our family were competitors as a use for different parts of the Japanese government.   
And, let's just say that they are very bitter towards us. But, it is the same with us towards them, so don't be too surprised.  
  
Then again, since I'm going off topic, let's go back to the maple tree.   
  
Onee-san loved the maple tree because the leaves looked like hands. * laughs * * picks up a leaf from a table near by * Onee-san you had a hand this big when you were three. She was so upset when she couldn't keep the leaf.  
For as with all living things, they perish. I guess that was one childish thing she could never let go of, though she never tried to show it.   
  
* camera pans around from that spot * * Many trees are seen as well as it being a backyard of some sort *  
  
We used to play back here. I think most of our lives were spent here, Kamui-kun. When they told us who we were, what our family was…everything.  
  
And for some reason unknown to me, Tohru Onee-san always held her hand out to that maple tree I showed you earlier. She cried on it, climbed it, laughed on it, and spent her life loving that tree.  
I asked her once and she said, "I love this tree because it is my silent friend…and it is alive. And someday, it will outlive me also."  
  
I looked at her and shook my head, but I knew it was true.   
  
The next month, she left.  
  
* goes into the house * * camera shows part rooms of a very traditional, yet spacious living quarters * Look at everything Kamui-kun. This is what our house was. But it will be gone when I leave from here. No one will take care of it.  
And we are no longer safe here.  
  
That's why I need you to keep this. You must know somewhat of where you came from.  
I know your mother wouldn't tell you, so I'm telling you now.  
  
She wanted to save you the pain as well as herself from telling you.  
But you must know. Even a little.  
  
Your grandfather always said, "You cannot know where you are going if you don't know where you came from."  
All I know is that you were the blessed child that Onee-san had waited for. It is not only because you are the chosen one for the earth's future.  
  
It is because you are human.  
You are her happiness.  
  
And she is my happiness…  
So no matter what happens, I will always wish for her to be happy even if it causes her more pain.  
  
Silence.  
  
* has a quivering tone, so camera goes back to pictures * * explains all seven pictures *  
  
* shows a baby being held by a smiling mother *  
  
This was your mother when she was born. And this was when she held me when I was born.  
  
* another picture is shown with two little girls laughing and pointing at the tree in back of them *  
  
Here we are in front of that maple tree. Onee-san just started kindergarten and I wanted to be in the picture.  
And then there's this one…  
  
* goes on to explain somewhat of their childhood, though scarcely *  
  
…but the last one is of you, Kamui. I kept this one because it was from the last letter I ever received from Tohru Onee-san.  
  
* zooms in on a baby sitting up looking confused as he blinks while sneezing *  
  
  
* zooms out to show the pattern of a pentagram *  
  
  
I'm sorry to make this so short, but if someone were to ever find this, it would ruin us. Please excuse the brevity of this tape, but I hope you enjoyed it.  
  
And please remember my nephew, if there was anything I learned from life, this is what I'll pass onto you, the deepest feelings I have inside…  
  
  
No matter what path you choose, never look back.  
You choose your own destiny and your own happiness.  
  
Life is too short for regrets.  
  
  
Thank you for watching Kamui-kun. And I wanted to say I love you before I even meet you…  
…and if I never get to tell you while I was alive.  
  
  
Remember, live with all you have!  
  
* end of tape *  
  
--  
  
The red eyed nephew stared at the static on the television and pointed his head down to the ground not wanting to cry.   
"Live with all you got," he repeated to himself.  
  
Thank you Aunt Tokiko…  
  
  
The door to the room opened and he turned his head to find Subaru had come back to him.  
  
  
He nodded slowly not really knowing what to believe in anymore…  
  
It was then that he stood slowly to face Subaru while thinking,   
"I don't know what I will decide, but I will live."  
  
I must…  
  
--  
Author's note: I didn't know what to do and this was I came up with it. ^^;;; I like Tokiko, but it was hard trying to keep this from moving from Tokiko's story to give a brief insight into Kamui's. 


	23. All of me

Disclaimer: X isn't Yui's.  
  
Deep Inside of You  
By Miyamoto Yui  
  
  
Chapter 23 – All of me.  
  
I scrounged my eyes as I folded my hands in front of me.   
"I must…" I said to myself as I opened my eyes again to look around the room. "I must think of something!"  
  
Open, close. Open close.   
I stuck my head inside the cupboards and my kawaii Inuki trailed behind me. I turned to him and asked, "What would you make to cheer someone up?"  
He barked at me.  
Smiling, I scratched his ears and squealed in delight, "Yeah! I'll make cookies for everyone!"  
  
Then, I tilted my head and put up an index finger in the air, "But I wonder what kind of cookies do they like…"  
I then sighed as I drifted off a bit. "I wonder what kind of cookies Kusanagi-san likes…"  
Inuki began put his nose on my knee and then I turned to him. "Cookies! Yes, that's right. Cookies…we're making cookies."  
  
"I'm glad there's enough stuff in this kitchen," I said as my voice was echoed upon the walls.  
  
Then, again, this campus has everything, doesn't it? I sweatdropped.  
  
"It's so different from home," I started to say as I flipped around a dessert book and found what I needed.  
As I gathered ingredients, I sighed. "Do you miss home too, Inuki?"  
  
He nodded his head.  
  
I didn't even have to ask him that one. We are of one mind and of one heart. Of course we'd be feeling the same.  
I then looked at his soft eyes and patted his head with nothing to say.  
  
After washing my hands, I poured water, butter, and flour into a bowl.  
  
I smiled at Inuki again and continued to mix the batter.   
  
I wondered how life would be if Inuki weren't here. I'd be very lonely, I knew.  
Quiet days always passed when I was at home. The usual routine of homework, school, eat, etc. became tiring.  
I needed something else to do.  
  
But all I really needed was Inuki.  
  
"Hey you," I said as I turned to him and we touched noses. "Remember that time when we were looking around the forest and you found other dogs?"  
He nodded his head.  
"They couldn't see you, but they could sense you."   
  
I remembered that very clearly.  
I was ten when this happened…  
  
Walking through the forest, we almost got lost trying to find some spot that I thought would be good to play in. No one really wanted to play with me because they thought I was crazy for talking to the air.  
They were the ones that were missing out, I reasoned. They didn't see my beloved Inuki.  
So there.  
  
But there were some wild dogs wandering around for some strange reason. I didn't know how, when, or why, but they looked at me and at the place where Inuki would be.  
They talked to him as best as they could.  
  
And then, they left after licking my hand.  
  
I wiped a tear away trying not to let it get into the batter as I mixed more ingredients together.  
  
"I wanted someone to see you too," I said to him. "I know I've told you a million times, but I wanted someone to see you too, Inuki."  
  
I just stopped mixing as I looked at him with a smile. "I wanted them to see how good you were to me. To see how much I love you in return."  
  
"You're…you're my twin."  
  
That's when the dam fell.  
My tears kept on falling so I had to run to the sink to wash them away. I looked around thinking that maybe someone would see.   
I hated people to see me cry, but I never could help it whenever I felt incredibly sad. To the point that my heart would break if I couldn't say anything at all.  
  
Inuki then pushed his nose on my knee. I kneeled down as he licked my tears away. I blinked at him while smiling.  
"Thank you…" I laughed. "You always tickle me whenever you do that."  
  
Then, I put on the oven and went back to making the cookies. As I put the sheets on the pans, I made them into little balls.  
  
"Ah!" I shouted with surprise as I glanced towards the window because of the lightning. "When will it stop raining?"  
  
"What do you think, Inuki?"  
He barked at me.  
I nodded in agreement. "Yeah, this is really not good."  
  
Then again, who was I to say this? It was the middle of the night and I couldn't go to sleep, so I here I was making chocolate chip and sugar cookies.  
I shrugged my shoulders as I resumed doing the cookies. I hummed a little tune and finished the rest of them. When they were arranged perfectly on the pan, I smiled to myself and held my hands out.  
As if I were casting a spell, like a little kid, I said, "I've got to put love on these as sprinkles. That's what grandma said to always do."  
  
I turned to Inuki with my index finger over my mouth. "Shh. It's our little secret."  
  
Putting the cookies into the oven, I clasped my hands together. "Dekita!"  
Inuki barked again and I sat on the dining table as he put his head on my lap. While stroking his ear, I again looked at the rain pouring outside.  
  
I wonder how Kamui is doing? I don't want to go there when he's not feeling too well.  
And I know he's looking at that video right now and that's not good if I come in while he's looking at something from his family.  
It will make me more homesick too!  
  
So, I'll just stay put.  
  
But how is Kusanagi-san doing? I hope he isn't getting wet. Maybe I should have bought him something more useful instead of always getting ice cream all the time.  
Look at me being…as if…I was his girlfriend…  
  
It's true though.  
What I wrote in my letter to grandma.   
  
I love him.  
  
But was it all right to love him? I wanted to ask if that was okay…  
To not be a burden to him.  
  
For, I had learned that loving someone also meant you could be a burden to them.  
Kamui and his friend…  
Inuki and not being able to show him to everyone…  
Sorata-san and Arashi-san for one another…  
Even Subaru-san…when he looked at Kamui…  
  
I patted Inuki's soft fur as he closed his eyes for a moment.  
  
Was I wrong to just hug a stranger who could see Inuki?   
I couldn't ever answer this.  
  
Grandmother said that when I arrived in Tokyo, there would be others who could see you Inuki.  
But all I knew was at that moment, I hugged Kusanagi-san because of not only that…  
  
I felt the loneliness somewhat go away.  
Oh, it's not that I don't love you Inuki…  
  
I began to cry as I grabbed his neck and nuzzled my hair against his fur.  
  
It's just that someone understood.  
I knew it by the way he looked.  
I just knew he could see how much I loved you.  
  
And that he would love you just as much.  
  
When he touched you, I could tell all of this.  
Being with you all these years and loving you more as the days passed, I just knew.  
  
Deep inside, a little voice told me, "Yes…this is the one…who would understand me."  
  
I wasn't the crazy girl who talked to the air.  
I wasn't the genki person that I always made myself out to be.  
  
I was whole.  
He could see you.  
And because of that, he could see all of me.  
  
Like waiting for these cookies to give with all my love and energy put into them, I waited so long for someone to see all of me.  
  
For how could you love me if you couldn't see my Inuki?  
  
  
"That's what that moment meant to me, Inuki…" I mumbled to his ear.  
  
  
With my ears open and my eyes closed with tears, I waited for the cookies to be finished…  
  
  
--  
Author's note: I'm back in the game again! Yea for 'Deep Inside of You'! I couldn't really make this sad because for me, Yuzu was genki. Too genki. Yes, she's had her share of sadness, but her charm is her genkiness and positive attitude.  
This chapter was actually easier to make than I had thought…  
Sorry about her referring to Kamui without the formalities. @_@ I couldn't decide or find sources since my manga is still packed after moving. ^^;;;  
But I hope I did her justice. I wanted her chapter to be unique as well, so I used cooking for a change. 


	24. Niji

Disclaimer: Yui doesn't and will never own X. She just loves the characters. ^^v  
  
  
Deep Inside of You  
By Miyamoto Yui  
  
  
Chapter 24 – Niji. (Rainbow.)  
  
  
I closed my eyes and yawned. But my eyes were already alert to what was happening.  
For a moment, the Earth was lulled.  
  
Had it really stopped raining?  
I looked outside of my window, but it was still a little dark outside.  
  
I smiled as I looked at the letter she had given me after I turned on the light.   
  
Nothing I could do now. My body was so used to waking up early that even if I tried to sleep in, it would be of no use to me.  
  
So, I just got a pen and paper.   
"I'll just write to her." I reasoned to myself.  
  
I laughed to myself.   
"While my writing is still legible…" I trailed off.  
  
The last time, I was a bit drunk with the others.  
  
Lifting my pen, I wrote,  
  
"Dear Miss Yuzuriha Nekoi,  
How are you? I hope that you are doing well."  
  
Crumble.  
  
"That's no good."  
  
I didn't seem the type, but I was one of those that had to say the 'right thing'. The most polite thing.  
It was a reflex I always had since childhood…  
  
"You're so weird," one classmate had teased me when I was little. "Always talking about the earth."  
"Don't you care?" I asked innocently.  
  
  
Another boy, in high school, said, "You think your special or something? Well, we think you're special all right."  
The boys shook their heads as they laughed. "Talking to all the animals at the zoo while we're on a field trip? You're so strange."  
"Too bad you don't talk to humans. You know? The things that _can_ talk back?" someone else chimed in.  
  
Without malice, I just answered back, ""Just because some things speak a different language, does that mean that they shouldn't be understood?"   
  
  
"Why can't you give a bit more effort in trying to become friends with your classmates?" my English teacher had asked me. She patted my back. "I used to be like that, but now, I've gotten over my fear of being shy."  
  
Either people liked me or not.  
I had always been gentle and courteous though I was not shown that same type of treatment sometimes. I couldn't help how I looked like.  
  
No one can.  
  
It didn't bother me at all though.  
Deep inside, strangely, I was not insecure about it. I was just truly shy that way.  
So, I found myself speaking to animals and other living things much easier than to humans.  
  
But I never deemed myself special because I could feel more than some people.  
If they had listened to the Earth's cries, then they would know how I felt for our world.  
They just refuse to see the reality of their destruction.  
  
That's why I joined this force.  
We fight a common cause.  
  
And Miss…  
She understands me and what I do.  
  
I smiled to myself thinking of that English teacher. She was so kind to me.  
She looked her.  
Miss Nekoi, I mean.  
  
  
But…  
How could I say 'how are you' when I knew what was happening to all of us involved in the end of the world?  
I won't be able to just watch everything and everyone at one point.   
  
What will I do?  
Whatever is necessary.  
As always.  
  
It's not the side I am on, it's what I believe in.  
  
  
I looked over at the next piece of paper in front of me and began to write again.  
  
"Dear Miss Yuzuriha Nekoi,  
  
I'm sorry that I couldn't come. I wish I had tried your cookies. I'm sure that they came out deliciously.  
Right now, I am…"  
  
Then, I wrote and wrote about the new project I had been assigned to.  
  
The dawn was approaching and I stopped writing to look out my window.  
I nodded to myself knowing what I would write lastly.  
  
"…and I hope you were able to see it today. After all the rain, there was a rainbow.  
They said that in the Bible, God made a promise never to destroy the Earth again.  
  
But does that count for humans also? Do we count in this promise? I do not know.  
They say we are made in God's image, but I know no answer to these propositions that people keep on coming up with. As if it were a campaign without support.  
  
Humans go about talking without really doing anything to save what's in front of them. Only some care. But will that be enough for Earth? Again, I don't know.  
  
Sorry, I did not mean to depress you. So, I will give you a flower. Strangely, I found it not in the forest, but while I was shopping yesterday. I'm not one to give roses, but I found a purple one just for you.  
  
It's said that when someone had tried to make a field of blue, it instead made purple roses. It was something more beautiful than was originally intended.  
  
Maybe that's how life really is.   
  
Kusanagi Shiyuu  
  
  
PS. I hope you saw the rainbow today. It's very beautiful from where I'm sitting."  
  
--  
Author's note: ^_^  
We're almost done. I hope I captured him all right. I'm used to paranormal stuff, but not talking with the earth. ^^;;; Honest!  
(Yea! My fifth fanfic for today!) 


	25. You said

Disclaimer: Yui doesn't own X. She is just in love with Subaru and Seishirou. The song 'shattered dreams' was by Johnny Hates Jazz.  
  
  
It was so beautiful from where I was sitting.   
  
On that tree branch, I watched him through the window of his room. He was changing out of a white-collar dress shirt and then he took off his black pants.  
I didn't flinch an eye out of guilt or wonder, I just loved looking at him all the same. I had always wondered what had made me change my mind that day.  
  
On the day I let him live, why had my heart been swayed so easily by this twisted gentleness? Killing him with gloves.  
  
At that moment, the thirteen-year-old boy looked at his gloves. It was one of those nights I guess…  
  
He began to cry silently to himself though he always smiled at his sister.  
She never knew things that I would take without asking.  
  
"You'll come back to me.  
I know you will.  
No matter how long it may be."  
  
I whispered this through the illusion and into his ear so sweetly. I smirked as he looked towards my direction.  
  
But I was no longer there for him to see me.  
  
  
Deep Inside of You  
By Miyamoto Yui  
  
Chapter 25 – "You said…"  
  
I earned that boy.  
  
Dammit…I earned him…  
  
I watched him at all parts of his life. Whether he was changing in the boys' locker room, being ridiculed for being so quiet, or being given a love letter from an admirer, I had watched him through it all.   
  
And no one would ever take him away from me.  
  
I didn't waste so much time with him to not have my fill or my way. Things never worked out that way. Everything was to always be to my advantage.  
My skill, my power, my manipulations…these were trinkets passed through my mother.  
  
She had been my worthy teacher.  
But I learned many things she never used. I scared her sometimes with what I could do.  
  
This word we called love,  
It's a powerful human emotion.  
  
A beast can use its instinct to make it ugly while deeming it beautiful.  
I sucked on Subaru's sorrow in this manner.  
  
It may have been part of the tradition, but in a way, I marked that boy out of my selfishness. Making him unable to leave for too long or for too far. I would always be close by watching him. His personal voyeur.  
I wanted to know what he saw. I wanted to see why he thought helpless humans were special because of their feelings while I thought they were just helpless. Wanting more, but that irrepressible characteristic of never getting enough always took over. Destroying themselves with a smile as long as it satisfied their own pleasures.  
  
This city…  
Tokyo Babylon indeed.  
  
And even after the death of his sister, he somehow knew though he couldn't see me. He could feel my eyes burning his skin wanting to find answers and raising more questions at the same time.  
  
I watched him eagerly.  
I watched him nonchalantly.  
  
It drove him mad.   
He let me watch him.   
  
And somehow, he liked it.   
The victim had somehow become a part of the hunter.  
  
As was my habit, after our 'meeting' of nine years delayed (well in his mind), he knew he could never surpass me. For with every year that passed, we both got stronger.  
But in different areas.  
  
And we became more indifferent.  
  
I used this fact as a shield to hold me against his curses and his most adorable ways. Knowing full well who had won the match all these years, it was only a matter of time until his stupidity for certain things would cease to make me laugh.  
  
Somehow, I found myself concerned…  
…when he learned not to care about me.  
  
  
In between this 'end of the world' saga, after his eye had been taken away, he no longer showed that he needed me. Gradually, he was learning to push me away.  
I was a bit jealous and greatly angered by the Dark Kamui…only I had possession of my Subaru.  
  
But I had also wondered why. What else could have dissuaded him? I could only come up with two things: Kamui or his own will.  
  
  
So, a few days ago, on one of his recent shigotos, I followed him.  
In the middle of the night, I came to his room through the balcony. The same one where I had come before 'the incident' with his eye.   
Getting up abruptly from his bed, he held an ofuda out to me.  
  
"Is this how you greet your 'special friend'?" I smirked as I walked in casually. "Wasn't it you who said 'Give Seishirou back to me' not too long ago?"  
He tilted his head forward to avoid my gaze and a hint of a melancholic smile came upon his face. "I finally figured out that my Seishirou was already dead."  
  
Letting go of the ofuda, he let it fall to the floor as he turned to me. "I only see his shadow now."  
  
The smirk on my face changed to thin lips. Then, I eyed him with a seductive grin on my face. "How did you figure he was gone?"  
  
"The day I let my dream die in my heart." He blinked his eyes beautifully. And I saw the emeralds shine as his lips said, "I didn't fight for my dream anymore. I finally accepted defeat."  
  
"You didn't have to change your dream. Or your wish," I answered as I sat on the end of the bed.  
  
He shook his head thoughtfully. The hint of the little boy with his wide eyes was finally gone from this man.  
  
Was I dying inside of him…?   
I gave you the illusion of love. I gave you the reality of betrayal.  
Had I made no mark on you Sumeragi Subaru?  
  
"I wanted to take care of animals." Subaru looked at me. "But if I couldn't even take care of my sister, then there's no point."  
  
"Seishirou and Hokuto were a part of my dream." He sighed as he folded his gloved hands. "I didn't like Tokyo with its shrine destroying devices. I didn't like all the pain that I saw. I didn't like seeing inflictions that I couldn't understand. But it was because of those two. They were the ones that made Tokyo, Tokyo to me."  
  
I only listened to him without anything to say. I couldn't even move.  
I couldn't feel what he was saying to me.  
I was always lifeless in that way.  
  
Smiling…  
The way he was when he was 16 years old…  
  
I was taken aback.  
  
Suddenly, his stare turned deadly as the day he had pointed at Kumiko the fake savior and said, "YOU CAN'T SAVE ANYONE!"  
  
I was looking at him as a reflection of myself and what I had done to him. He finally told me, "Now go away, Sakurazukamori."   
  
He couldn't even say my name.  
I choked a bit with my pride hurt a little. But I kept my cool.  
  
I was glad I was the way I was in times such as these.  
I nodded with a smirk.  
  
"Okay, today, you win," I said mockingly in a joke as I got up.  
  
I stood with my back to him. "But remember this Subaru, I'll always remember what your sister told me. That if you ever found the person you loved, and if that person betrayed you, it would shatter you to pieces."  
  
I turned around to face him as he watched me back. "Because you would love so purely."  
  
"I couldn't tell her though," I continued. "That _that_ was my intention."  
  
Subaru looked at me in confusion.  
But I was trying not to manipulate him. I was actually telling him the rare truths that never came out like they were supposed to. If at all.  
  
"You were of the Sumeragi. And I had to kill you completely to keep you from rising like that woman and her followers." I held my eyes on him. "That's the logical reason and I know you've figured that out. But have you figured out the other one?"  
  
"No," he honestly answered.  
  
I seriously said, "I cannot share you"   
Then, I turned around to leave.  
  
But when I did so, he grabbed my hand and I let myself sit with my back towards him. He wrapped his arms around my shoulders.  
  
I wanted him to remember me. And with all that I had done, he was starting to forget.  
I had to hurt him to make him remember.  
Yes, this is a sick cycle of sorrow.  
  
Leaning his mouth near my ear, he began to whisper, "My sister said that if I sang, Sei-chan would do anything I asked."  
I sat frozen as I looked to one side without a verbal response.  
  
"That offer has to be upheld." Then, he continued as his breath warmed my ear, "Seishirou-san said he had loved me. 'Good job', he had said while holding me like this."  
  
It scared me a bit. To find how much of a good teacher I had been to him…  
Almost surpassing me…  
  
It was then that Subaru began to sing. The boy who never wanted to sing in the karaoke bar was singing to me as he pulled me closer.  
  
"So much for your promises  
They died the day you let me go  
Caught up in a web of lies  
But it was just too late to know  
I thought it was you  
Who would stand by my side."  
  
He pulled me to face him as he began to push off my coat. While undoing my tie, jacket and shirt, he sang,  
  
"And now you've given me, given me  
Nothing but shattered dreams, shattered dreams  
Feel like I could run away, run away  
From this empty heart."  
  
Kissing me on the lips, he continued,  
"You said you'd die for me."  
  
Pushing me onto the bed, he placed his knees on each side of my hip. Looking down at me, he closed his eyes as he began to kiss my cheek and then my neck.  
  
All I could do was watch him looking at me.  
We had traded places…  
  
The hunter had now become the hunted.  
  
"Woke up to reality  
And found the future not so bright  
I dreamt the impossible  
That maybe things could work out right  
I thought it was you  
Who would do me no wrong."  
  
I looked away, but then, he placed his hands on my face and kissed me again. "Give me another dream for just one more night, Seishirou-san."  
  
At that moment, I took a hold of his waist and traded positions. As I pulled on his jean zipper and began to caress him, he continued to sing.  
  
"And now you've given me, given me  
Nothing but shattered dreams, shattered dreams  
Feel like I could run away, run away  
From this empty heart  
You've given me, given me  
Nothing but shattered dreams, shattered dreams  
Feel like I could run away, run away  
From this empty heart  
From this empty heart."  
  
Kissing his neck, he lifted his chin as he breathlessly whispered melodically,   
"I thought it was you  
Who said they'd die for love."  
  
I shook my head as I buried my face onto his shoulder blades and then down to his waist.  
  
"And now you've given me, given me  
Nothing but shattered dreams, shattered dreams  
Feel like I could run away, run away  
From this empty heart  
  
You've given me, given me  
Nothing but shattered dreams, shattered dreams  
Feel like I could run away, run away  
From this empty heart, oh no no no."  
  
Then, he pulled my face with both of his hands between them. As he looked at me, he began to cry as he touched the eye I had lost on his behalf.  
  
His mark on me,   
Like the one I left on his hands.  
  
"You said you'd die for me  
Oh, oh, die for me  
So much for your promises  
So much for your promises."  
  
And yet again, I was caught in a web…  
  
  
Now, I was telling him that this was to happen because of his sister's curse. That he could never go beyond me.  
I couldn't let him. For if had, I would lose him forever.  
  
His hand pierced inside of me and I felt my blood flow. I felt more alive than I had ever been even if I was physically dying.  
  
Holding onto him, with my last breath, I thought of him singing to me. And so, I said, "Kimi wa…boku wo…"  
  
Looking into those green eyes for one last time with confusion…  
  
Figure it out you stupid boy…  
  
  
I smiled as I said my last line.  
I didn't tell him "I love you."  
  
'Til the end, I wouldn't tell him.  
Until my last moment, I had to have the last word.  
  
I didn't finish my previous sentence. I whispered to his ear, "Uso da."  
  
Yes, it was all a lie.  
  
I could never admit it to you…  
Couldn't you ever see it, Subaru?  
  
Are you so blind to never know how much I loved you?  
  
Maybe…someday…  
You will understand  
With my wish.  
  
I blinked my eyes and fell onto his shoulder.   
  
Hold me until I die, Subaru.  
Did I never tell you the story that I wanted to die in the arms of whom I loved?  
  
With his song ringing in my ears, I truly smiled.  
It mixed with his cries as I felt his arms on my body.  
  
  
Yes, Subaru.  
I'd die for you.  
  
--  
Author's note: Finally I got to do this chapter that's been in my head for a month. * cries * * sniff, sniff * I cry everytime I think of him dying. Oh wonderful Seishirou…  
I had to put him again because he and Subaru had changed so drastically since the beginning…  
I love this chapter…  
And I had to find a way back to Kamui. ^^v  
(I think I made a mistake with the last chapter's number. Gomen! But my luck! Once again, I have Seishirou on a chapter 25!) ^_^v 


	26. All or nothing

Disclaimer: Yui doesn't own X or Tokyo Babylon.  
  
  
Deep Inside of You  
By miyamoto yui  
  
  
Chapter 26 – All or nothing.  
  
"Yes, Subaru. I'd die for you," I thought I heard You say to me.  
  
What? Had I heard correctly? Was it all true or had I been imagining it all along?   
I wasn't sure though.  
  
I couldn't understand anything at all.  
All I knew was that I was still breathing and that you were gone with your sigh and my tears on you.  
As fate would have it, I wouldn't have time to even think about my next move. I couldn't even hold him because the bridge was starting to collapse.  
  
And like most that grieve, I didn't have too much time; I wanted it longer.  
  
But how could he say that to me?  
Even until the end, he would be torn by force from me.  
  
Nothing was coming in. Nothing was leaving.  
Now, all I could do was touch Kamui as he looked at me so longingly.  
  
I just kept on sitting on the chair for god knows how long as Kamui was talking to me. I was trying to tell him that it didn't matter what someone did. There would _never_ be a way in which everyone would be happy. For if that were the case, then no human would falter in their own right.  
There would be no selfishness.  
  
Humans would be perfect in every respect.  
Because we are not, we crush another person's hope. That's what that dead woman in the Tokyo Tower had told Seishirou-san and me.  
People cause trouble for other people. Yet, they do not know that they themselves bring upon their own destruction.  
As for myself, I had chosen my path as such.  
  
"Your eyes are red, Kamui," I told him so that he would go rest.  
And he had sadly listened to me.  
  
I sat in the chair listless. Once again, I had become the doll I wanted to forget.   
In all my frustration, I finally got up.  
  
Opening the window before me, the wind blew and I could smell you in the air. You were still with me.  
I glanced at the bloodied trenchcoat and I closed my eyes.  
  
In a second, I opened them wide again as I felt your mark fading. Kissing it, I sighed as I stared at the scene before me.  
  
"Until the end," I mumbled, "you made me think, Seishirou."  
  
Was that something to be justified, Seishirou? How could my thoughts ever reach you if you had to tell me something to throw me off? When you fulfilled our bet many years ago, I thought that _that_ was it for you.  
  
You had accomplished being the perfect, cold assassin.  
You had obstructed my path as the Sumeragi clan's heir. Just as you had planned.  
  
But…  
I was no challenge to you, Seishirou.  
  
Why would you fear me? Why would you fear someone that had no advantage over you whatsoever? That chance that maybe I could, you took it away. Not only that, you mashed it to the ground making sure it was never to be retrieved again under any type of light.  
  
It keeps on repeating in my mind.   
Your voice.   
"Yes, Subaru. I'd die for you."  
  
Except, I couldn't tell. Your cold lips had stopped moving. For a brief moment, I had touched them to make sure.  
  
Holding onto the curtain, I let go and jumped out of the window. Looking back, I had imagined Kamui's face staring back at me with much disappointment.  
  
Shaking my head, my grief was finding its way to my dry throat. I kept on swallowing my tears with none coming from my eyes. Reaching for nothing, I searched and searched for a remnant of you.  
  
My feet had led me back to your garden.  
Closing my eyes again, I pretended you were there. With your arms around my shoulders, I could feel you whispering to my ear.  
  
The cold wind blew and I knew I was alone all over again.  
  
I remembered at that moment when you closed your eyes, my tears fell onto your body. I held you not really knowing what to do.  
Wrapping my arms harder and harder around you, I couldn't tell you how much you had hurt me.  
  
I stepped closer towards the cherry-blossom tree like a moth to a flame knowing it would be burned so easily.  
  
As I was about to touch one of the cherry-blossom's branches, the Dark Kamui interrupted me.  
I listened to him and I felt my years rush back to me in a glance. That's what happens when you're dying, I heard. That's the superstition.  
  
He gave me…  
Your eye.  
  
With this you accept the responsibilities that come along with it?   
The Dark Kamui smirked at me and I nodded. When he turned around, I held the vial so lovingly.  
Not knowing whether to hide my shame and become joyous that for once…  
  
You told me something truthfully.  
Even if I'm an object of possession…  
  
How pathetic that I loved being yours.  
  
For it was your selfishness that made you human to me. Your possessiveness made me fall in love with you.  
  
You were hurt by another person…  
Yes, someone besides you, Seishirou.  
  
Holding it so close, I felt like I was holding you again before you died.  
  
I had loved you as much as my sister predicted.  
As I had feared.  
As you had anticipated.  
  
  
Opening my eyes, I held the vial in my hands carefully as I tried to find your apartment. Through the open balcony, as you had done many days before, I barged into your room.   
  
Putting the vial on the bed, I went through your closet. Pulling the trenchcoat I had given you many years ago for your birthday, I hugged it. Smelling it, I tried to absorb you all over again.  
Looking at a mirror, I had imagined you still smiling at me when you wore it for me.   
  
It was the day that you said we should have a date.  
As usual, I blushed and said I couldn't make it. Instead, I invited you to come over to my apartment…  
  
As soon as he had come through the threshold, I smiled and said, "Omedetto!"  
"It's not my birthday," Seishirou said with confusion on his face he smiled in amusement.  
"Well, that's true." I blushed as I fidgeted in the hallway. "But since it already passed, I thought I'd at least celebrate it."  
"Why?" He stood before me.  
"Because Seishirou-san deserves my thanks." I smiled gratefully.  
"If you're talking about-"  
I nodded and interrupted, "Yes, but it's for everything."  
He smirked and I blushed even more.  
  
"Okay, so where's my present?" He leaned his hand on the wall on one side of my head.  
  
I gulped. "Y-yes."  
  
Taking up my chin, he winked. "So where is it? Or shall I take it by force?"  
  
I turned even more red at the moment as my heart pounded in my chest.  
  
"It's in the bedroom," I said.  
  
With his mischievous smirk, I knew I had given him the wrong type of answer.  
  
"Oh, really?"  
  
Then, as he closed his eyes to kiss me, he opened them again. "Jodan."  
  
I let out a big sigh of relief. "Seishirou-san!"  
  
He chuckled as he stood straight up and looked around. "I wonder why Hokuto-chan didn't come and interrupt me."  
  
"Oh, she wouldn't…" I mumbled a bit annoyed.  
  
"Excuse me?" Seishirou asked.  
  
"I said she's out on a date. And this was my idea." I laughed sheepishly as I took a hold of his sleeve.  
  
"Oh, an aggressive Subaru-kun!" He enthusiastically followed me.  
  
"Excuse me?" I questioned confusedly.  
  
"Nothing." He patted my hat.  
  
When we had gotten to my room, I smiled and opened the door. "I got this for you."  
  
Seishirou looked at the twin set of black trenchcoats before him as he walked into my room. "Why did you get two of them?"  
  
"I didn't know which one would look better. I liked this one."  
  
(I cried at the moment while looking at the mirror. It was the one he had died in.)  
  
I continued, "But this was the one Hokuto-chan picked out for you. So, I bought both."  
  
Seishirou looked at me and smiled sincerely. "Thank you, Subaru-kun."  
  
As I was going to take them from my bed, I didn't notice that Seishirou had closed the door behind him. Bending over to pick up the two coats, he grabbed my waist. Whispering into my ear, he told me, "You're too kind, Subaru."  
  
I held onto the sleeve of the coat I liked. But then, his fingers ran down my arm as he made me let it go. Turning me around, I was being slowly pushed onto my bed with the two coats below me.  
"Seishirou…san?" I looked up at him as he looked at down at me with a melancholic smile.  
  
We just kept on looking at one another intensely.  
  
In all honesty, I grabbed his face. Without shame, I pulled his face close to mine.   
Then, I asked, "Do you love me, Seishirou-san? Do you love me as you say you do?"  
  
At that moment, he began kissing me…  
  
It was funny though.  
I didn't feel he had to answer me.  
  
I was so sure of you then, Seishirou.   
  
To keep things quiet, I grabbed onto his body. The harder he pushed onto mine, the harder we would kiss.  
His hands held me as I accidentally bit his lips out of pain.  
  
They started to bleed and I licked them.  
At that moment, when my green eyes gazed into his amber ones, Hokuto-chan came home.  
We scrambled to put our clothes on as we positioned the coats into the exact same way I had arranged them earlier on my bed.  
  
When Hokuto-chan came in and found nothing, I felt guilty.  
Yet again, I was holding something from her.  
  
When Seishirou left that day, I waved goodbye.  
"Do you love me, Subaru?" he whispered into my ear while holding my hand.  
  
For a moment, he held my hand longer than I had expected.  
  
"Of course," I had wanted to say.  
  
But before I could, he titled his head, let of my hand, and walked out without looking back. Afraid of the answer I'd give.  
  
  
This time, I was the one that was afraid. As I dropped the coat onto the bed, I slowly took up the vial. Opening it, I would join what shouldn't have ever been together in the first place…  
  
  
Many days later, Dark Kamui came to me. The one who had been once called Fuuma, the friend of Kamui.  
  
Smoking my cigarette, he told me someone called Nataku died.   
After that, I nonchalantly asked about Kamui. He looked back curiously at why would I ask for such information, but he answered anyway.  
  
Then, he left.  
Getting up, I took my cigarette out of my mouth and smashed it into the ground with my boot.  
  
Jumping down, I found a little pond forming at some alleyway. It reflected me back as I looked down at it.  
My eyes: one green and one amber.  
My coat: the one Hokuto-chan had chosen.  
  
Shaking my head, I was proud and disappointed at what I had become.  
My dreams of leaving my job as the Sumeragi's heir were even more burdened. I had totally renounced my identity and merged with Seishirou's.  
  
  
Days later, I had to go back. He would worry if I left for too long.  
Kamui always worried about things like that.  
  
As I was slipping through the shadows of the dark night, it had begun to start raining once more.  
Everyone was either asleep or keeping watch around the city. Sorata-san was roaming around on some building while Yuzuriha slept in her bed.  
  
I waited in the dark kitchen until Kamui would come.   
  
I knew how he worked. When he got depressed, he would want to eat cookies or get a cup of water after dehydrating himself.  
  
After a few minutes of sitting cross-legged at the counter, I smirked as I found Kamui standing quietly at the doorway.  
  
Rubbing his eyes like a little kid, he gave me a closer look through the darkness.  
  
I looked intently at Kamui.   
The boy I had helped not too long ago. The boy I had said to go to school as I silently wrapped the tie around his neck while he looked up to me in wonder.  
I had wondered what was so special about him. Not as a god, not as the savior, nor as the person who would decide the world's fate…  
  
…but as a human.  
  
I could tell that he was uneasy as he looked from side to side in uncertainty.  
  
"Hello." I blinked my two mismatched eyes at him.  
  
"Su…subaru-san?" he coughed out. "Is that really you?"  
  
  
For me to be gone so long from him, had he already forgotten my face?  
Did I surprise him that I started to look through Seishirou's clothes?  
  
To breathe in his smell: the scent of sakura, blood, and his very essence.   
I had known it all, Kamui.  
I had wished that I had crushed him so easily as he had punished me for being so compassionate. My crime for enduring pain and mercy for others was rewarded.  
  
With new pain to wash and never be replaced.  
  
The show must begin…  
  
I nodded. "Yes, it's me."  
  
"Then tell me why do you have that man's eye?" He took a step back away from me.  
  
"It was a present," I answered while still looking at him as I pushed myself from the counter.  
Walking towards him, I chuckled softly. "Why are you scared of me?"  
  
"You're not Subaru-san," Kamui countered sharply.  
  
I stepped closely feeling myself wanting to fall at the same time. I reached out for his cheek.   
Then, I grabbed his waist with my other hand. Whispering, I told him, "I thought you missed me."  
  
Kamui trembled out of fear and apprehension. Not knowing what to do, he couldn't even scream.  
Nor could he use his powers on me.  
  
After all, I was the one who had found his human heart.  
  
Pulling him, I slowly took him and sat him on the counter. Putting my hands on each side of his body while leaning on the counter, I looked at him. "You said you wanted me to stay with you, Kamui."  
  
I leaned closer to him. "I came back to tell you 'yes'."  
  
As I looked at Kamui, that's when I had fully understood you, Seishirou. As I touched the amber eye with my gloved hand, I felt myself become a little whole again.  
Even if it was through this that we could be together, was it so disappointing to you Nee-san? I loved him to the core of my being that I had ingested the heartless soul that did not think twice of killing the Subaru Sumeragi everyone once knew?  
  
Especially yours, Hokuto-chan. Especially yours.  
  
Kamui watched me in shock and fear.  
I could tell.  
Yet, he was fascinated by the person who had transformed before him.   
  
  
I took his hand and put it over my green eye.  
  
  
Was this how you looked at me when I was that young?  
  
It couldn't be, Seishirou. We were different. Kamui was a person who had gone through much since he was a child. His pain was the beginning of more being spilled before him.  
  
I had brought upon my own after destruction as you had. We chose to hurt and be hurt.  
He hadn't.  
He was pushed to pick a side he believed in. Kamui had picked humans.  
If it were the me of yesterday, I would have also.  
  
I could not pick up the broken pieces of my heart as he had done. I was still living in a world where I was disillusioned. Why did I have to live outside a world that wasn't in my head?  
  
Taking his hand down, we touched forehead to forehead.  
"Kamui…close your eyes."  
  
He shook his head.  
  
Closing my eyes, I could feel myself already crying for the both of us.  
"Don't you trust me?"  
  
"I don't know anymore…" he replied shakily.  
  
Then, I felt his face to make sure he was. My thumbs softly pressed onto his eyelids.  
He closed them slowly.  
  
He wasn't as innocent as me. I knew what he was thinking. We were different when we were both sixteen.  
And now I finally saw why you loved me since I was little. How you loved to tease me and tell me that the cherry blossoms were red because someone had put them there.  
You had helped them die, Seishirou.  
  
Therefore, I am no better now.  
I took on different jobs with the ones I had been doing all my life.   
Now, I also watched people without feeling too much when I killed them with my own two hands. So, the woman I had killed along the way might as well have been my sister.  
  
I took up what you had left behind because it meant that I could be a part of you.   
  
Yes, this is sick.  
  
Even after you died, you still wouldn't go away.  
From my mind, from my hands, from my way of life, you still were there.  
  
"Kamui…" I asked with my heart pounding deeply inside my chest, "…do you love me?"  
  
Was it purity? Was it corruption? Was it love? Was it hate?  
Tell me, Seishirou.   
To be embraced so lovingly; to be shattered so thoroughly.   
  
Being so close, I embraced him trying to feel his chest. Feeling if his heart had died like my own with all our inflictions.  
I could feel his heart beating just as fast.  
  
"Yes…" he answered quietly.  
  
I had tears in my eyes, but that was for sleep.   
  
I was always living in a dream,  
A broken one that kept repeating.  
  
I looked at Kamui as I held his face between my hands.  
  
Lightning struck and I saw my reflection in his eyes.  
So honest, so sincere.  
  
  
I saw my eyes and I touched yours again thinking I'd have warmth when all I could think of was your body that died so coldly.   
Even your breath was so cruel; leaving me no words.  
Maybe you should have been quiet, but instead, you told me something.  
  
"The lie." You said it was a lie.  
What was a lie and what was truth?  
  
That's what Kamui has to figure out.  
But unlike you, Seishirou, I still knew the difference.  
  
I will teach Kamui to live;   
I will learn to finally let things die.  
  
For I was not too stupid, Seishirou.  
You may have denied that you loved me until the end. You may have killed my sister and wanted to stop the future heir of your enemy's clan.   
You may have crushed the person who was once known as Sumeragi Subaru…  
  
I still know the difference.  
The lie is the truth. And the truth is the lie.  
You taught me that while I loved you. You teach me that while I still love you.  
  
Deep inside, I still cared for the Earth.  
With my last ounce of hope, I was putting my feelings into Kamui.  
  
That's why I had chosen his side of this game for the apocalypse.  
  
  
Leaning forward, I kissed Kamui, and he kissed me back.  
  
Kamui…  
Will learn…  
  
I unbuttoned his white pajama top while still kissing him.  
Gradually, I undressed him wanting to taint him.  
  
  
I will hurt him, as you had done with me.  
It would be for his own good.  
  
So that he'll have the strength to break another.  
The other half of his unresolved self.  
  
You'll see how much I learned from you.  
  
Between crazy and sane, isn't that how I cared for you pounding on the emergency door? My gloved hands bleeding until I didn't know what pain was.  
To have you look at me indifferently,  
Now, nevermore?  
  
  
Putting my hand softly on his back, I started to softly kiss his neck as he whispered, "Subaru, I love you."  
  
I didn't answer him back as I entered his body without his soul's permission.  
Marking him invisibly that I would follow him to hunt him until I died.  
  
Watch me so closely.   
You'll see everything with your own eye.  
  
It isn't ever going to be the kind of pure love as I had given to you, Seishirou.   
Don't worry about that.  
  
  
Now, I truly understand you.  
How you were intrigued by me: My innocence.  
Why you did what you had to…  
  
  
I will break him…   
…because I learned to love him.  
  
  
  
Since I wasn't able to fulfill my dreams years ago;  
I want to save Kamui.  
To make him not regret anything. That it wasn't wrong to love people and to hurt them because you cared so much.   
  
  
Seishirou…  
I couldn't tell you how much I wanted to still be with you, Seishirou…  
To be killed by you. For you to pay attention to me again, even if you did hurt me.  
  
I wanted you to look at me again.  
  
To look my way again.  
Even if you were lying, I wanted you to give me an illusion.  
  
  
Who was the real Seishirou-san?  
I'll never know what's the truth.  
  
  
Now, you'll never know…  
_That I didn't care for such things as that._  
  
You were _you_.  
  
And you couldn't ever understand that…  
I'd always look for you. No matter who you are.  
  
No matter who or what you were, Seishirou.  
  
  
  
To live your life  
To love someone,   
It comes to one thing.  
  
All   
or   
Nothing.  
  
  
--  
Author's note: One more chapter to go…  
My poor baby Suby. I had wanted to get his feelings as becoming the Sakurazukamori and how he was gently becoming more quiet than he should be. But, I wanted to express that he loves Kamui, but it was a different kind of love than what he felt for Seishirou. More of an understanding as something more than friends and lovers, but not being together as an item. I hope it wasn't too confusing. 


	27. I am Shirou Kamui

Disclaimer: X is by Clamp. I wrote this as a form of deep appreciation for their wonderful works.  
  
  
Deep Inside of You  
By Miyamoto Yui  
  
  
Chapter 27 – I am Shirou Kamui.  
  
  
"All or nothing," Subaru breathlessly whispered into my ear.  
  
My warm cheeks pressed against his own as I draped my arms over his shoulders. Holding him, I wanted him to know that we were both alive. I had not forgotten what he had told me the first time we met.  
  
You must come back from the illusion you've built around yourself.  
  
So, we just sat there holding one another tiredly. Fatigued by life.  
Scared about who or what was to be faced, I placed my hand over his amber one so that I could see his green one again.  
  
Then, I let go as I stared into his different colored eyes.  
  
He was still Subaru-san.  
  
"No matter what you do…" I softly spoke into his ear, "whether you change your clothes or try to make an act, I know you're still there, Subaru. The Subaru-san I know."  
  
Subaru just held me without moving his head from my shoulder as his lips lightly brushed against my cheek.  
  
I could have asked Hinoto-hime's help to get to know everyone more. To know where Sorata had grown up. To see where Arashi-san had been trained. To understand how did Yuzuriha meet her precious Inuki.  
Find out more about why Subaru's heart couldn't ever be mended.  
  
  
I didn't want to. Not because I didn't care, but because they had accepted me as is. And I would return their respect and affection in the same manner.  
They knew me as the 'Kamui', but these people understood that I was more than someone chosen to be a god.  
  
I was only a boy.  
  
Subaru understood this more than anyone.   
I couldn't comprehend why, but I knew he had. By the way he always looked at me and when he went out of his way to tell me to study hard, he knew exactly what I was going through.  
  
  
"Subaru-san," I told him with shaky hands as I embraced him more, "I knew one day you'd leave me too. It's a pattern I've noticed."  
  
I laughed quietly to myself as my shirt hung on my elbows and our clothes hung on our body carelessly opened and violated.  
  
"Kamui…" Then, he placed his hand on my lip as he sang into my ear,  
"It wasn't my intention to mislead you  
It never should have been this way."  
  
I shook my head to stop him. "I'll finish the rest of this song, Subaru."  
  
"What can I say?  
It's true, I did extend the invitation.  
I never knew how long you'd stay,   
When you hear temptation call,  
It's your heart that takes, takes the fall.  
Won't you come out and play with me?"  
  
I kissed him on the lips and sang once more,  
  
"Step by step  
Heart to heart  
Left, right, left  
We all fall down  
Like toy soldiers  
Bit by bit, torn apart  
We never win  
But the battle wages on  
For Toy soldiers "  
  
Thinking of Kotori, Fuuma, Sorata, Arashi, Yuzuriha, Hinoto and her attendants, I lightly pushed Subaru away from me.  
  
"It's getting hard to wake up in the morning  
My head is spinning constantly.  
How can it be?  
How could I be so blind to this addiction?  
If I don't stop, the next one's gonna be me   
Only emptiness remains  
It replaces all, all the pain  
Won't you come out and play with me?"  
  
The rain fell and fell harder to the ground, an unknown rhythm in sync to my heartbeats.  
  
"Step by step  
Heart to heart  
Left, right, left  
We all fall down  
Like toy soldiers  
Bit by bit, torn apart  
We never win  
But the battle wages on  
For Toy soldiers."  
  
  
We looked at one another as we both sang,  
"We never win."  
  
I sighed while we touched foreheads trying to find an answer to everything in a single song knowing that everything would never go away. We were part of a cycle.  
That's why we could care for one another so much.  
  
"Only emptiness remains  
It replaces all, all the pain  
Won't you come out and play with me?"  
  
  
Aunt Saya…  
Aunt Tokiko…  
Mother…  
  
I will learn to stand up. I will protect the ones that I love.  
They're not gone…  
You're just sleeping. Waiting for me…  
  
"Step by step  
Heart to heart  
Left, right, left  
We all fall down  
Like toy soldiers."  
  
  
Yuzuriha…  
You taught me to smile again. Even when you cannot find the answers, they'll always be pointed out because life cannot be all painful.  
  
"Bit by bit, torn apart  
We never win  
But the battle wages on  
For Toy soldiers."  
  
Arashi-san…wherever you are…  
You taught me that being quiet shows strength of character. That if you betray your feelings and show your weakness when you are supposed to lead people, you'll push them away.  
Your actions prove your worth in the end. Not words.  
  
"Step by step  
Heart to heart  
Left, right, left  
We all fall down  
Like toy soldiers."  
  
Sorata…  
As moody as woman as I ever got, you showed me that life isn't about fate. And if fate should have been foreordained, then you try your best to be a punk to rule against it. Futile as is it, you go and do what the hell you want.  
  
"Bit by bit, torn apart  
We never win  
But the battle wages on  
For Toy soldiers."  
  
  
I kissed Subaru on the forehead and then I let go of him. "You taught me that life isn't about wishes."  
  
With a tear in my eye, I sang as I pushed him away.  
"Bit by bit, torn apart  
We never win  
The battle wages on  
For Toy soldiers."  
  
  
After we redid our clothes, we stood in front of one another.  
  
"Goodbye, Subaru. Thank you for everything," I said as he turned around to leave.  
  
Tap, tap, tap…  
  
Pitter, patter.  
  
The rain fell, but I knew he heard me. He stood in the kitchen doorway as I said, "Deep inside, my wish wasn't about saving anyone or saving myself. I just wanted to be remembered that I lived, protecting what was most important to me."  
  
I continued, "As a human."  
  
"Even though I knew nothing of you, I loved you because you wouldn't lie to me. You treated me like an ordinary person." I smiled through my tears with his back still facing me. "You were the first to treat me for being myself "  
  
"I know that if I was never the 'Kamui', I would never have met all of you." I sighed. "For years, I had wondered why couldn't it have been someone else."  
  
"Now, I know, and I'm glad in a way that this was my burden alone." Walking towards him, I wrapped my arms around his shoulders again as I whispered, "I want to be deep inside of you, Subaru."  
  
Quietly, he squeezed my hand. Pulling my hand up to his lips, he kissed it as he pushed me softly away from him.   
  
Then, he left me silently.  
  
  
As I went to my room and changed into my school uniform. I stared at my reflection in the mirror. "In a world that wishes to race to be the one known as 'special', all I wanted to be was an everyday person."  
  
I am not a god…  
I am not a savior…  
  
I am boy who's trying to find some type of happiness in life.  
  
Because I realized that my wish isn't to make things stay the same.  
It was to see if I could change what has been destined for me.  
  
  
I turned away and set out towards the Dark Kamui: the representative of the self I could not accept.  
  
That isn't correct, though. I am going towards you, Fuuma.  
My best friend is sleeping in the Dark Kamui and I must wake him up now.  
  
I am ready to get you back…  
…because I finally know who I am.  
  
  
I am Shirou Kamui.  
  
  
  
  
--  
Author's note: Yea! Done!  
I'm really sad right now because I lost 25 of my fanfics and so I'm really heartbroken. So, I started making this fanfic again.  
  
I hope you enjoyed it. The only thing I can say is that I didn't put the dad of Kotori and Fuuma because for some reason, I didn't want to misinterpret him.   
I put all my heart and soul into this fic and I hope that you were able to feel everything that you could. I really liked doing this.  
  
Thank you for reading, as always.  
  
Love,  
Yui  
12/19/02 


End file.
